I love the nanny state, but let’s leave outdoor smokers to puff away in peace | Martha Gill

Have you ever wondered why pubs in Britain bother with gardens? They seem like a solid enough investment now, in summer, sure. But what’s the draw for the other 10 months of the year, as rain howls sideways under the awning and the only heater is on an automatic timer, meaning you have to get up to press the button every 10 minutes? How does the maths of that work? I’ll tell you. Smokers.

Smokers keep pub gardens going. A garden, for a smoker, is still a lure in winter. It’s thanks to smokers, keeping their long watch over the slimy benches and inadequate parasols in the dregs of the year, that the rest of us get to pretend, in July and August, that we live in Spain. But now we hear smokers are to be moved on – even from the pavement outside, even from nightclub smoking areas – into the shrieking tundra of “somewhere down the street”, where they will presumably have to stand in single file, out of the way, as pedestrians try not to look them in the eye.

When asked about these plans – leaked last week to the Sun – Keir Starmer said: “[My] starting point on this is to remind everybody that over 80,000 people lose their lives every year because of smoking.” Fair point. But we’ve done quite a lot on smokers now, haven’t we? There’s a complete generational ban on the way. The price of a cigarette has rocketed and smoking rates have dropped further and faster than in most other rich countries . You can’t really argue that secondhand smoke is a problem in the fresh air, or that young people will pick up the habit at a pub, because that’s covered by the aforementioned age ban. We’ve been sensible, and it has worked, but it’s edging now into neurosis. We’re the mother who won’t let her eight-year-old eat lunch at other people’s houses in case the forks aren’t sterilised.

I say this as someone who loves the nanny state. I want tougher regulations on gambling ads and junk food – I even think the incremental smoking ban is a good idea. I believe humans only have so much willpower to ditch bad habits, especially in the face of vast commercial incentives to keep those habits going. Big business wants us to eat, smoke and drink our way to an oversized grave, and the state has a duty to push back a bit. But there is a point at which the pushing needs to stop – or you begin to prove the libertarians right. That point, I think, has arrived, with this.

After all, a favourite libertarian argument against any sort of intervention is the “slippery slope” – the idea that only a short distance downstream of, say, a seatbelt law for kids under 14, is the police state out of Children of Men . This frames regulation as a sort of gateway drug: we’ll be tripping so hard on the early, sensible laws that we won’t notice when they move on to silly ones, and in this numbed-out haze will wander into full authoritarianism. Well, this is Starmer’s chance – as a pro-nanny statist – to show this isn’t true. He can demonstrate that we, as a nation, can handle a little plain cigarette packaging without going mad and shooing smokers off every pub doorstep in sight. We are grown up and responsible. We can regulate, but we know when to stop. We won’t binge. We won’t, in fact, ban smoking in the back garden of a Wetherspoons.

It would be braver to switch the attention to places where legislation is still thin on the ground

Some have pointed out that the public seems largely in favour of this ban . But of course. A recent YouGov poll showed Britons also like the idea of compulsory ID cards, CCTV cameras on every corner, and a central database containing everyone’s fingerprints. Polling by Ipsos Mori during the pandemic found that a quarter thought nightclubs and casinos should never reopen , and almost two in 10 favoured an indefinite ban on leaving home after 10pm “without good reason”. The truth is, just under the surface, we Britons are snitchy little prefects, longing to send everyone including ourselves to detention. We don’t need an overbearing nanny so much as a neglectful older brother, encouraging us, once in a while, to seize the day and jump from the top of the stairs. For our own good.

The thing is, it’s easy to ban stuff. The Economist has coined a useful term – “ ban it harderism ” – to describe a trend towards statutory inflation; we have an oversupply of tough new laws, which often do the same thing. It’s illegal several times over to steal a cat, because MPs know the public likes it when they ban stealing cats . But strict rules mean little when they overlap, and even less when overstretched police hardly have time to investigate assaults and burglaries. Are they really going to turn up to drag a truculent smoker from the front of the Ship and Anchor to the Pret three buildings along?

I sense a smack of “ban it harderism” with smoking. The other smoking bans went down well, so why not ban it even more? It would be more worthwhile – and braver – if Starmer turned his attention to places where legislation is still thin on the ground. If the issue at hand is children’s lungs, for example, he could do something about the filthy air belching across too many playgrounds as cars hurtle past.

If he must focus on smoking, he could also look at what works. The NHS states on its website that vaping – while not perfect – is one of the most effective tools we have for helping smokers quit . But there’s now a suggestion, from a Labour MP, that a ban on vaping indoors may be soon to come. So, do we actually care about smokers? Or do we just want to ban something?

• Martha Gill is an Observer columnist