Fifty Commandments of New Labour

With its obsessive law-making, this government has sought to micro-manage our lives, says Brendan O’Neill. Let’s hope the next administration leaves us alone

The Ten Commandments, which stood Judeo-Christian societies in fairly good stead for centuries, only forbade eight things: murder, adultery, theft, bearing false witness, coveting your neighbour’s missus and things, taking the Lord’s name in vain, worshipping false gods and making idols. New Labour, which clearly knows better than God, has, in its 13 miserable years in power, created thousands of new things Thou Shalt Not do. In fact it has instituted an ‘Era of Thou Shalt Not’, where there’s always some law, busybody, copper or camera keeping a watchful eye to make sure we don’t commit any of the 4,300 new criminal offences created by the government. That’s approximately one new offence for every day Labour has been in power. An average of 27 new offences a month under Tony Blair, and 33 a month under Gordon Brown. A new Ten Commandments every couple of weeks. Here are just 50 of the things we are no longer allowed to do thanks to the suspicious, stony-faced killjoys who rule over us.

We can’t buy more than two packets of painkillers at a time, lest we use them to try to top ourselves. We can’t hunt foxes with dogs. If you’re under 16, you can no longer win goldfishes at funfairs (the practice was banned in order to ‘send a message that buying a pet or owning a pet is an act of responsibility’, said Ben Bradshaw in 2004). We can’t bear arms, even for sport — one of the first things Labour did in 1997 was implement a complete ban on handguns, forcing competitive shooters to go abroad to train for the Olympics. We can’t smoke in pubs. We can’t smoke in restaurants.