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Why alcohol price restrictions wouldn’t work

Have you heard of the Onion Man?

The Onion Man sits at the end of your bed after a night out and tells you what a failure you are. ‘Your friends hate you’ he says. ‘You made an absolute fool of yourself.'

When you’ve done nothing wrong - that is - no embarrassing stumbles or crass jokes, he will simplify his pointed criticisms: ‘Think of all the money you spent.'

Now, I should clarify - the Onion Man is a figment of my imagination, but the feeling of guilt and shame is very real and is almost a fixture on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Therefore, when it emerged this week that the plan to set a minimum price of alcohol at 45p a unit will probably be axed from next week’s Budget, I must admit, I did a little fist-pump - Henman style.

However, having sat with the news for a while, I’m actually not sure that such a minimum price would make any real difference to our drinking habits.

Alcohol prices have been rising aggressively for the ten years I’ve been allowed to drink, and while I don’t think I’m in the at-risk category that this policy is aimed at, I believe that such drinkers may display impressive resourcefulness in the face of minimum price booze.

You might find Prohibition-era style moonshine popping up often, or an increase in more dubious intoxicants.

Actually, the use of the ‘binge drinking’ term is often used by Cameron and his fellow Oxonians as a rhetorical connector to the working class, and I don’t buy it - especially when binge drinking amongst youngsters has seen a significant drop in recent years.

I have a feeling that what the government is actually talking about is alcoholism. Now that is a conversation that needs to be had out in the political theatre.

So Cameron is flip-flopping on the issue, and while this is a criticism that is regularly aimed at the PM, it is actually unsurprising of a coalition government elected in an increasingly centrist society.  Within this, it’s hard to deny that he and the British Medical Association have their hearts in the right place in being advocates of this initiative. They want to save lives and money.

But very often the reasons for wanton binge drinking and alcoholism are personal, professional, psychological etc. This policy is a placebo that smacks of protectionism and will threaten pubs.

So I will lose no sleep over the policy’s probable no-show in next week’s Budget. Regardless, the Onion Man is going to show up on Saturday morning, with his horrible sneering voice.
‘You did it again’ he will say, ‘everyone was laughing at you behind your back...’