Tories want to try their hand at prohibition

Tory MP, James Brokenshire, has confirmed that David Camoron intends to ban the below-cost sale of alcohol and review "the round the clock availability of very cheap drink". James Brokenshire says "he is right to do so".

A few years ago, the thought of banning sales of cheap booze wouldn't have crossed the mind of 99% or Tories. A few years ago the Tories were the party of individual freedom and low taxation. Not any more. Now they're a party of prohibition, punishment, punitive taxation and the nanny state.

I used to be a binge drinker in my younger days. Except it wasn't called binge drinking then, it was called going to the pub and getting pissed on a regular basis. At one point I was going out 3 or 4 nights a week and drinking an average of about 25 pints a week. My liver is intact, I don't have a criminal record, I've never been involved in a brawl and I've never sexually assaulted someone (although I once pinched a woman's bottom when drunk which would probably get me a night in the cells nowadays). In the end I succumed to the realisation - as most people do - that drinking 25 pints of Caffreys in a week really isn't good for your health or bank balance and stopped.

The point is, it's up to the individual to decide how much they drink and when and if they stop. The more you tell people that something is wrong, the more they will do it. The Americans tried prohibition and it was swiftly repealed when they realised it caused more problems than it solved. If you try and ban alcohol - even partially - people will put in enormous effort to beat the ban and they will always succeed.

The Tories, under David Camoron, have metamorphosed into Blue Labour. Like New Labour, they are neither one thing nor the other. They are authoritarian, environmentalist, control freaks. If, as expected, the Tories win the next general election it won't be the sweeping change we're used to seeing following a change of regime but more a case of "the king is dead, long live the king".