Conservative candidate for Epson condemns the proposed adult smoking prohibition in Pop-Con event

Now ladies and gentlemen it gives me great pleasure we’re going to hear from a range of voices from the Conservative party present, but here’s a voice from the Conservative party future – please give a very warm welcome to our superb candidate for the constituency of Epson and Yol, Mari Fraser. Mari:

Margaret Thatcher once said, “the right of man to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to buy property, to have the state as servant and not as master, that is the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free economy, and on that freedom all of our other freedoms Depend”, and the Conservative party’s 2019 Manifesto, the manifesto that delivered us a landslide victory that saw us get the highest share of the popular vote since Margaret Thatcher came into power, that Manifesto specifically said, “we as conservatives want to give you freedom, but time is running out for us to deliver that freedom”, because it certainly cannot be found in the smoking ban for anyone born after the 1st of January 2009, which will create a ludicrous two-tier system where in years to come a 50-year-old man will be able to legally buy a packet of cigarettes but his 49-year-old wife will not, and it’s certainly not found in continued plans to ban multi-deals on sugary foods, meaning a grown adult can commit that cardinal sin of buying two packets of biscuits, but cannot benefit from the lowest prices.

And the irony is, Nany State policies do not take care of us, there is internationally no defining correlation between increased controls on tobacco and lower smoking rates. Likewise, no defining correlation between controls on food sales and increased health and longevity. In reality, the Nany State causes more harm than good.

Conservative policies are meant to be economically sound, but sin taxes increased prices and disproportionately affect people on the lowest of incomes. Ever increasing numbers of regulations inhibit competition and innovation and the creation of spurious crimes for activity that would never previously have been considered close to criminal takes the police away from dealing with serious crime, and creates black markets in illicit goods, that only benefit criminal gangs, and what once one freedom is surrendered, other freedoms follow, because the state is no Mary Poppins, so where do we stop?

The independent national food strategy review commissioned by the government recommended that we would have to cut our meat consumption by 30% over the next decade to meet our climate and biodiversity targets. Are we to see sin taxes on stake in penance for our presence on this planet, and what about that most British of pastimes, drinking?

After the tobacco ban was announced, pressure groups started lobbying the government to follow that policy in other areas and to take bolder, braver steps to prevent harm from other risk factors such as alcohol. One of the most pernicious consequences of outright bans like that on smoking is that regulations introduced after that point will seem moderate in comparison. If you complain in the future about the increasing restrictions on your ability to drink, you’ll get a slap on the wrist, and you’ll be told that you’re lucky to be able to drink at all.

Because let us never forget, the nanny in her most monstrous form, the Covid lockdowns, which saw the great – greatest attack on personal liberties under peacetime conditions that this country has ever seen in return for very limited public health benefit. As a result, we have suffered immeasurable economic social health and psychological harm, but we were conditioned to be grateful because finally we got to leave the house and go for dinner with our families and friends. There is a better way we need to be brave in calling for policies that deliver that freedom, because the more free a country, the more happy and prosperous its people. We need to be championing the free market, to encourage competition and Innovation, cutting regulations to reduce the role of the state, to create a smaller one that defends the freedoms of the British people, and does not curtail them, and we need to be slashing the crippling tax burden to encourage spending and supercharge. Much needed economic growth – the British people are individuals, not toys of public policy.

I trust the British public to make the right decisions for themselves and for their families far more than I trust the bled state, and if those decisions involve life’s smallest of pleasures, a slice of cake, a cigarette after a long day at work, a large glass of wine or whiskey, then it’s time to put Nanny to bed.

Mari Fraser