U.K. Nanny State Considers Targeting Pubs

Britons love what they often call “our NHS,” the U.K.’s single-payer universal health-care system. But do they love it more than their pubs? We may soon find out. Andrew Gynne, the U.K.’s public-health minister, recently said that Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government was considering restricting the operation of bars and pubs to improve health and social outcomes. Per the Telegraph:

It’s part of the same public-health effort that led the Labour government to introduce voluntary (for now) health checks at workplaces in August, about which I wrote earlier this month. And like that effort, public-health bureaucrats are justifying it by casting individual behavior as, in effect, another number on a spreadsheet:

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Jack Butler

Jack Butler is a former submissions editor at National Review.

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Britons love what they often call “our NHS,” the U.K.’s single-payer universal health-care system. But do they love it more than their pubs? We may soon find out. Andrew Gynne, the U.K.’s public-health minister, recently said that Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government was considering restricting the operation of bars and pubs to improve health and social outcomes. Per the Telegraph:

It’s part of the same public-health effort that led the Labour government to introduce voluntary (for now) health checks at workplaces in August, about which I wrote earlier this month. And like that effort, public-health bureaucrats are justifying it by casting individual behavior as, in effect, another number on a spreadsheet: