George Osborne is a prohibitionist

Former Chancellor George Osborne says that he thinks smoking should be banned and orange juice should be taxed. I wrote about this for Spiked.

 

Eager to stress that he has been a health zealot all along, Osborne yesterday called for smoking to be banned outright and for taxes to be levied on orange juice. These are potentially unpopular policies in the country at large, but not at the Times Health Commission, to whom he addressed his remarks. Its members include Henry Dimbleby, who wants to tax all sugar and salt, Lord Darzi, who wants to ban smoking outdoors, and Matthew Taylor of the NHS Confederation, who wants the government to reintroduce nationwide mask mandates every time someone sneezes.

The twist is that Osborne is himself a smoker, or at least he was when the Daily Mail photographed him in 2021 ‘drawing heavily on a cigarette’ and looking ‘pensive’. Is he one of those smokers who requires the whole world to change because he lacks the willpower to stop? Or has he become one of those grumpy ex-smokers, living a life of irritable nicotine deprivation?

 

Read it all. 

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