Rachel Johnson’s ridiculous booze ban would unleash the next English Civil War

Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance warned yesterday that without further measures the UK will see 50,000 cases a day by mid-October. It is widely expected that they were warming up the public for new lockdown measures to be announced by Boris Johnson today. If he’s still at the drawing board deciding what restrictions to bring in, let’s hope he wasn’t listening to his sister’s LBC show.

Rachel Johnson thinks a ban on selling alcohol is the answer to rising coronavirus cases until a vaccine is found. Now, to be fair to Rachel, she was just floating an idea during a conversation about people ignoring social distancing guidance. Let’s be honest, we all float bad ideas now and then. This just so happens to be a particularly terrible one that shouldn’t ever be on the table.

It’s not an idea plucked from thin air. South Africa banned the sale of alcohol in March before lifting it on 1 June and re-imposing it on 12 July. South African government officials believe the drinking restrictions significantly reduced pressure on the country’s hospitals and have hailed the results as a policy success. Well, they’re hardly going to admit they were wrong are they?

The ban on alcohol has devastated South Africa’s alcohol industry, impacting breweries, the hospitality sector, retail, farmers who produce grains and grapes to make wines and spirits and workers from the sector. This just compounds the economic devastation that the pandemic has wrought.

South Africans were certainly were not happy with the ban and some of them took to the streets in protest along with sector workers. When the ban was lifted, they celebrated in numbers. During the first ban, there were 476 reports of liquor store robberies, while online searches for brewing home liquor spiked.

Who could have predicted this? Well anyone who looks at the history of prohibition. It increases criminal behaviour, boosts organised crime and the unregulated black market thrives, to the detriment of public safety. Prohibition is the bluntest of blunt instruments and leads to a raft of negative and predictable consequences.

How would an alcohol ban in England go down? I suspect wealthy people like Rachel would fare well. They’d stock up their wine cellars and drinks cabinets and quaff away. As for the poor? Let them drink hooch! The poor would turn to moonshine (not to be confused with Moonshot), black market products and narcotics to give them something to navigate the misery and tedium of lockdown.

Meanwhile, as our economy stares into the abyss, we’d ensure mass layoffs and bankruptcies in the hospitality sector and alcohol industry, many more pubs would close their doors forever, the retail sector would take a big hit and the alcohol beverage industry would be hit for six. Again, it’s the poor and lower middle class that would be hurt most.

Then there’s the question of civil liberties, remember those? It was something we had in the before time, Before Covid, and long ago we used to cherish them. Precious few people seem too bothered these days. I would humbly suggest while our personal lives are micromanaged by the government, with a ban on seeing friends and family likely incoming, and house arrest always looming over our heads, telling the English they can longer have a drink would be an unwise move. There is government overreach and then there is government overreach. It would probably cause a new English Civil War.

You may take our lives, and many of our freedoms, but you will never take our booze! Would we freeborn booze loving Englishmen ( and women) last the day before manning the barricades, demanding the right to get blotto be restored immediately? How long before the off licences are being raided, the supermarkets see a shop lifting epidemic and illicit microbreweries pop up all over England?

So, Rachel Johnson threw out the idea out there into the public realm. I wish to politely but firmly throw it back: you can keep it Rachel! This is England, and we have suffered enough! Banning alcohol is a ludicrous idea and it would me a monstrous imposition! If this comes up at the family dinner table Boris, ignore it.