Dick Puddlecote

Election Reflections A few days ago I wrote about how the election may affect the cause of vaping and e-cigs based on evidence from the archives here at Puddlecote Towers. Not particularly forensic, but events since make me fairly optimistic about the future.

E-Cigarette Politics has offered a considered view of how the election changes matters, and I would go along with most of it.

How this affects vapers

Surprisingly, Cons are probably the vapers’ best bet. [They] voted 19 out of 20 MEPs against the anti-ecig TPD, and this is a good record for honesty and organisational skills. Lab and Greens have a 3-line whip against vaping and will do whatever they can to ban it in order to protect tobacco tax revenues and pharma profits.

Essentially this means that we can expect a sympathetic ear when the the new TPD is transposed, though for all practical purposes vaping faces some degree of ban in the UK via restrictive regulation. As the law comes from the EU, the most corrupt political structure in the world, nothing else can be expected. We won’t know what degree of ban will be imposed until around 2017 – 2018, when the enforcement structure is finally in place and the regulations are fully enforced. As the Dept of Health is owned by pharma and will control enforcement, we can expect that EU regulations will be enforced to the hilt (ain’t that the truth – DP). We can also expect that the anti-vaping regs will get tighter over time, as the pain of lost cigarette sales, lost tobacco tax revenue and lost pharmaceutical sales really begins to hurt.

Unless, of course, legal challenges to the TPD (Article 20) are successful – in which case everything goes on hold for a while.

This is very true, and it is worth remembering that a key campaign promise of the Conservatives was to rein in some of the excesses of the EU by way of renegotiating terms prior to an in/out referendum in 2017. As such, I’d say that a priority for every e-cig user in the UK who lives in a Tory constituency would be to write to your MP – as in, now – and ask them to have Article 20 kicked into the long grass. The Tories are embarking on this renegotiation with a view to persuading the country to vote in favour of staying in the EU, so make it absolutely clear to them that if the de facto ban on e-cigs goes ahead unhindered, you will be voting OUT in the referendum. If you’re unsure how to contact your MP locally, use this website to do it.

Speaking more generally about the election, I was invited to a London election night party where, early on, the talk centred around exactly what kind of socialism and spending other people’s money the UK would vote for on the day. But then this flashed up on the big screen TVs to audible gasps of surprise.

Of course, we now know this to have been a cautious estimate and that the Tories took 15 more seats and, with them, a clear majority. Since then, a façade seems to have been broken down.

Politically-correct left-leaning social media had created an aura of inevitability whereby public opinion was on a one-way course to ‘progressive’ utopia. Everyone was agreed that big business was bad, anyone with a few quid had to be punished, and longevity was the entire point of living. In a yes/no quiz of 5 health spokesman on the Daily Politics, all five were boasting about how they were the best party for nudging/shoving/bullying the public – even the UKIP candidate said he was in favour of a ban on smoking in parks!

On Thursday, to the hilarious disbelief of the left, the British public voted against all of it. The Conservatives have been given a mandate to be truly conservative.

Simon Clark wrote on the eve of the election that …

In terms of tobacco control and other product regulations the only difference between the Conservatives and Labour is the speed with which the parties regulate. The Tories take a little longer but the direction of travel is the same.

But a week, as they say, is a long time in politics and I’m not sure that holds true considering the events of the past few days. Eric Pickles was widely praised for his declaration that sock puppets would no longer be tolerated, and post-election it appears that Oliver Letwin is on the case more fully.

Oliver Letwin, the Tories’ policy chief, has spent the campaign in Whitehall drawing up proposals to merge quangos and slash Government regulation. These are likely to form a key part of the spending review.

Now, I happen to know that Letwin has been made acutely aware of how many headaches his party had had to suffer from its funding the likes of ASH and Alcohol Concern, for example, to attack the government and demand illiberal legislation. In a regime of austerity, it is the simplest decision to turn off the tap and relieve those pressures, especially since the decision of the election jury which effectively rejected lefty top-down finger-wagging tosspottery.

Politics is cyclical and can take a while to about-turn, but the message that was sent on May 7th is that this country isn’t that happy with mealy-mouthed righteousness after all. UKIP tore more strips from northern Labour heartlands than they harmed the Tory vote in the South; wherever Labour raised its anti-fizzy drinks, anti-alcohol, pro-tobacco levy heads, they were handed a big fat ‘meh’. Wherever the illiberal LibDems posted a candidate, they were ruthlessly humilated. They’ll have to go away and think long and hard about what that ‘liberal’ bit means.

Clegg said Liberalism had lost. Unfortunate confusion of Lib-Dems with liberalism. Maybe real liberalism can now be reconstituted
— Frank Furedi (@Furedibyte) May 8, 2015

The past decade has been one of intolerant and ugly dictating of others’ choices by a hideous clique of self-absorbed and self-deluded bien pensants. As they publicly soul search on Twitter and cry about how they thought they had the country in the palm of their hand before the quiet electorate cruelly stole control away from them (to which the only response is, of course, to throw a tantrum and deface memorials), it should be clear to the new government that they can re-discover the concept of the public being allowed to make their own choices. to be tolerant of what the public choose and to just leave us alone for at least a few years.

Freedom is, after all, quite popular.