General British politics discussion thread

Reminds me of this old cartoon:

Lee Anderson's councillor wife suspended from the conservatives after she's seen campaigning for the Reform Party

That's an insane strategy. They quite obviously have a near zero chance of picking up 20 seats that they don't currently hold, and they are unquestionably going to lose the great bulk of the 80 most marginal seats that they currently hold. This strategy means they are spending the bulk of their resources on campaigns they will not win, with the inevitable result that there will be potentially winnable campaigns that they will lose for lack of resources.

A rational strategy would be to write off, say, the 50 or 100 most marginal seats, and devoke the bulk of their resources to the next 100 seats, in the hope of retaining as many as possible of them. That offers the best chance of minimising the scale of their loss.

But it means acknowledging up front, even if only to themselves, that they cannot win this election. And this is a party that for years now has preferred the shamelss but comforting lie to the honest truth. So they'll go on with this madness.

Seems to be an honest case of "stopped clock"

As far as I can gather, this smoking ban seems to be a pet project of Rishi himself. I don't recall much about it before he was PM.

Another reason to be for this ban is all the usual cranks and conspiracy nuts in the Tories are against it. Truss, Badenoch and Braverman voted no and you are usually on the right side of history if you are on the opposite side to them.

its a pointless policy, you look at the decline in the popularity of smoking and its an example of what can happen without resorting to prohibition as I dunno about 70% of smokers don't even like smoking. They are gifting the industry to the black market, they may even make smoking "cool" again for some and I am speaking as someone who dislikes the tories and smoking immensely.

I'm as anti-smoking as the next person.

But I really can't picture a future time where a 34-year-old is refused cigarettes in a shop, and has to get their 35-year-old friend to buy them after they have shown their age id to the staff. Just can't see it happening.

Ya but playing the long game it will eventually get to the point where it is defacto illegal. It could take 80 years but it would happen when the age limit gets that high.

But in reality it would happen long before then in a way mentioned in the post above.

It won't last.

I've noticed the same people who support legalising cannabis are the same people who support banning tobacco cigarettes.

I'm trying to figure that one out.

As someone who absolutely despises smoking and would love to see it completely eliminated from society, I still find this a bizarre piece of legislation to try and push through and I'm unsure what the endgame will be here. I can only imagine that banning smoking will drive it underground, and there's already millions being turned over in the sale of illegal cigarettes at present. Surely something that will rise if teens can't get their hands on their vape crap and turn to the black market for them.

Perhaps the bill should have dealt with cigarettes only and left the vape things alone? Vaping seems to be all the rage at the moment is seen as "kewl" amongst younger fools, who have no idea that they are willingly addicting themselves to a substance that's harder to kick than heroin. But at least they aren't inhaling the other 2000 dangerous chemicals that go into a cigarette, including arsenic, lead and polonium 210 (yes, the chemical that killed Alexander Litvinenko).

But a blanket ban will, probably, only make it more desirable to some people and, at the end of the day, will probably prove unworkable in the end.

I do wonder if the people who come up with such schemes would privately be delighted with an outright ban, but for whatever reason don't want to admit it.