SOME 60 days in to this Government’s time in office and the list of what Sir Keir Starmer and his cohort of senior ministers dislike and what they plan to do is growing by the day.
Yet amid the tsunami of such hard-hitting announcements comes the petty and unworkable.
The petty is Sir Keir’s bit of red meat for the hard-left — taking down Margaret Thatcher’s portrait from Downing Street — and the unworkable is his smoking ban in pub gardens.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a non-smoker and understand only too well the damage smoking does and its cost in human and in health terms.
However, while banning smoking inside offices, pubs, restaurants and offices — where the level of passive smoking is high — makes some sense, doing so in outside areas makes no sense.
It is also ironic that this announcement is made when a significant number of police forces no longer wish to arrest those who openly smoke cannabis, in effect tolerating its use.
This, when countries like Sweden consider the drug as dangerous as Class A illegal drugs.
The latest variants of this drug are more and more powerful and pose huge mental and physical health risks, particularly for the young, while driving the gang violence and criminality rife in too many communities in the UK.
I’ve lost count of householders who have called the police because they can smell cannabis smoke from neighbouring alleyways where dealers operate, yet they say nothing is done.
So, I presume this new ban will be enforced, which will mean extra council and police enforcement at a time when the police already complain they are overstretched.
After all, there is hardly a high street shop that isn’t right now facing an epidemic of shoplifting.
Shopkeepers, too, often threatened with violence, complain that they rarely see the police — while the police say once they nick an offender, little happens and they are back on the streets.
Small wonder, as Sir Keir makes this a priority, to arrest those smoking in pub gardens (and if he doesn’t then it’s an empty gesture).
The number of crimes leading to any charge within the year is around an astonishing low of six per cent.
This announcement smacks of the unnecessary, heavy handed nanny state yet again.
Not surprising, there is even uproar in his own party where these proposals have been described by one MP as an attack on working-class culture.
Business leaders even called it nuts, saying it will be another blow to the viability of our nations pubs.
It is worth reminding ourselves that going to a pub is a social affair — an event which is becoming less and less viable.
The arrival of nanny in the form of an overstretched police force attempting to enforce an unwanted and unnecessary law verges on the absurd.
It is reported that after some ministers briefed it was her idea, people around Sue Gray — the PM’s Chief of Staff — very unusually distanced her from the announcement by making it crystal clear she had nothing to do with it.
When even your Chief of Staff denies involvement, it’s time to admit what an unworkable idea it is.
