Controversial British politician Nigel Farage says ‘s anti-smoking laws and high taxes have led to an organised crime spree.
Mr Farage, who leads the right-wing Reform party in Britain, pointed to as an example of what not to do while he blasted leaked plans to establish no-smoking zones around UK pubs, clubs and football grounds.
Appearing as he often does for media spots outside his favourite drinking hole – with a pint glass of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other to be puffed between answers – Mr Farage said the heavy taxing of tobacco in had enriched ‘massive criminal gangs’.
He gave the dire warning that if the UK Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer followed through on leaked plans to stop people smoking in beer gardens and outside areas of entertainment venues, it would be the ‘end of pubs’.
Mr Farage said he didn’t think the government had appropriately considered the consequences of the proposal and the impact on business.
‘You’ll notice very few people drink inside [the pub], they drink outside it. Why? Because they’re allowed to smoke outside,’ he said.
‘I’ve been coming here for 30 years, regular basis, every week for 30 years. If the government say that I can’t have a drink and a smoke outside, I won’t come back. And I’m one of hundreds of regular customers of this pub that take that view.’
Mr Farage’s claim ‘s prohibitive tobacco excise duty drives criminal activity has at least one fellow advocate in Victorian Libertarian MP David Limbrick, who staged a colourful stunt on Wednesday to ‘celebrate’ 100 arson attacks on tobacconists.
Mr Limbrick brought a cake baked to look like a cigarette to the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House and lit sparklers as a stand-in for candles.
As the sparklers burnt down Mr Limbrick and his staffers sang ‘happy arson Victoria, happy arson to you’ to the tune of Happy Birthday.
At the song’s conclusion Mr Limbrick shouted, ‘hip hip, kaboom’.
Despite the dark irony, Mr Limbrick said there was a serious message to the stunt adding it was ‘only blind luck that someone hasn’t been killed already’.
Tobacco stores throughout Victoria, particularly in Melbourne, have been set alight in a string of alleged arson attacks thought to be part of a turf war by crime gangs wanting to get rid of competitors for their illicit tobacco.
‘We can stop [targeted arsons] by attacking the root causes rather than playing this whack-a-mole approach that the governments are doing,’ Mr Limbrick said.
‘We cannot police our way out of this. We need to look at the root causes that can be solved through the power of economics.’
He later tweeted that ‘increasing tobacco excise taxes is outright protection for organised crime models’.
‘One can only conclude they are either evil and intentionally supporting organised crime or they are simply stupid and incompetent,’ he wrote.
Despite the ‘commemoration’ Victoria Police said there had only been 97 arson attacks reported in the state.