UK Politics

Boris Johnson needs to stop weighing in on things. Dude is disgraced but somehow keeps forgeting it and making appearances anyway. The brass neck on him and Liz Truss is insane.

Not 100% convinced that nativist appeals to freedom are straight up racism but definitely a dog whistle and racists would lap that shit up.

WRT smoking - I was over in Denmark last weekend and it was neat to see that they still had certain bars where you could smoke indoors. Slightly too young to have experienced it in the UK but it was a glimpse back in time. Stayed for a few beers and my clothes were absolutely reeking afterwards lol.

It would have been nice if the UK could have made the smoking ban more of a de facto ban by introducing it as a special type of licensing. Just make it so much effort that the average bar would have no incentive to do it.

idk the nordic countries seem to get the balance right in terms of personal liberties a lot more often compared to the UK. I guess it is kind of offset by their collectivist culture (and massive natural asset wealth) so people are free but no one gets left behind.

Ah, there we go.
Disgraced former PM De Pfeffel Johnson riling up the "everything that changed since I was 15 is bad" crowd.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Mr Johnson also criticised the state of the Conservative Party, suggesting it lacked the "dynamism" of its Canadian counterpart riding high in the polls.

Mr Sunak's policy of raising the minimum age for buying tobacco every year to try to phase out smoking has provoked criticism from a number of Tories, including another former prime minister Liz Truss, on the more libertarian wing of the party.

It has been reported that Mr Johnson could return to the campaign trail in the general election expected later this year, in an effort to help revive the Conservatives' polling numbers, particularly in the "Red Wall" seats they won in 2019 in the North of England and the Midlands.

In January, Ms Truss - who was briefly prime minister after Mr Johnson - struck a similar note, arguing a Conservative government "should not be seeking to extend the nanny state".

Speaking ahead of the introduction of the bill last month, Mr Sunak said: "If we want to build a better future for our children we need to tackle the single biggest entirely preventable cause of ill-health, disability and death: smoking."

A law aimed at phasing out tobacco sales was due to come into force in New Zealand in July, but was repealed by the country's new coalition government in February.

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