Alcohol advertising ban on the way?

The government is reportedly looking at a ban on alcohol advertising, although on current trends it will probably do a U-turn on that too.

I wrote about it for The Critic and discussed the evidence for alcohol ad bans (there isn't much of it) with Reem at the IEA. I wrote about the evidence based two years ago in this report. 

 

It took Keir Starmer less than a year to dash what few hopes we had of him. There was talk of the Labour Party having more room to manoeuvre on public sector reform than the tentative Tories. It was assumed that the state of the public finances would leave the government with no choice but to tighten its belt. Withdrawing the Winter Fuel Allowance from wealthier pensioners was largely symbolic, but it showed that Sir Keir was prepared to take tough decisions. 

All that fell apart upon contact with the first set of local elections. What we have instead is yet more borrowing, much more spending, and the hope that the economy will somehow grow. It is Sunakism with a dash of socialist spite directed at farmers and private schools. 

Rishi Sunak left a bunch of displacement policies behind him and the new government has been dutifully pushing them through Parliament, but Starmer can’t rely on this stockpile for much longer. The Pet Abduction Act is already law. The Football Governance Bill has had its third reading. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is in the House of Lords. There is a danger that the well of headline-grabbing policies that are cheap to implement but ultimately futile runs dry. 

And so Labour’s policy wonks have had a pow-wow and come up with the idea of banning alcohol advertising. What could be more Sunakian? According to the Telegraph, health officials are “exploring options for partial restrictions to bring [alcohol promotion] closer in line with advertising of unhealthy food”. It is rumoured that a ban of some sort will be part of Wes Streeting’s optimistically titled Ten Year Plan for the NHS next week. 

  

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