Fake philanthropy

Smoking ban UK: What does the new bill do as MPs vote to ban tobacco for generation alpha?

MPs have voted to pass a landmark smoking bill which the government says will create the UK’s first “smokefree generation”.

First announced in the King’s speech last November, the controversial bill passed through Commons on Tuesday (April 16) as Labour threw their weight behind it. It was not without opposition.

56 Tory MPs voted against Rishi Sunak’s bill, while a further to 106 either abstained or were absent. However, members had been given a free vote by the government, meaning they have not been told which way to vote. This softens the blow for Mr Sunak in against this backbench rebellion.

Yet another step away from conservative politics. Ban lying to children about climate change and gender would give them a better start in life. Apparently Sunak prefers fake philanthropy.

The philanthropy was what he most hated: all these expensive plans for moral forcible feeding, for compelling everybody to be cleaner, stronger, healthier and happier than they would have been by the unaided light of Nature. The longing to get away into a world where men and women sinned and begot, lived and died, as they chose, without the perpetual intervention of optimistic millionaires, had become so strong that he sometimes felt the chain of habit would snap with his first jerk.

Edith Wharton – Twilight Sleep (1927)