Is it a surprise that Labour want to ban outdoor smoking?

Anyone surprised by leaked documents showing smoking may soon be banned in beer gardens, small parks, outdoor restaurants, open-air spaces at nightclubs and outside football stadiums hasn’t been paying attention. 

For a start, the UK has been on the slippery slope towards tobacco prohibition for nearly two decades: Tony Blair banned smoking outdoors, Theresa May set a target of going ‘smoke-free’ by 2030. Rishi Sunak – a man whose opposition to some of the tougher lockdown measures gave a glimmer of hope that liberalism hadn’t been entirely extinguished in the Tory party – attempted to make a generational ban on tobacco sales his legacy.

All of this is a death by a thousand cuts, our freedom slightly curtailed with every stroke. It’s also yet another blow to a pub industry which, as well as being part of this country’s social fabric, supports 885,000 jobs across the UK and contributes £23 billion to GDP.