Remember back in 2001, it was all about being cool. Everyone was wooing the youth vote. Tony Blair strummed his guitar, headed footballs, wore jeans and let Euan go drinking. He was a regular kind of guy, the Tories were the weird ones. Even when William Hague tried to appear hip with his baseball caps and 14 pints, it didn’t work. Students loved Labour.
And Tony couldn’t get enough of them. In the 1997 election, according to the pollster Populus, 50 per cent of 18 to 25-year-olds voted, and more than half backed Mr Blair. The new Prime Minister adored his mini-acolytes. So before the next election, he made it clear to his staff that he needed more initiatives to keep the young voting.
They came up with the perfect answer — 24-hour drinking. Brilliant. A Downing Street aide explained their masterplan to me: the young in cities and market towns across the country could enjoy balmy nights imbibing their favourite tipples “continental-style” on pavements. The Prime Minister said that it was “daft” not to be able to get a drink whenever you wanted. Labour sent out its first campaign message by text, telling young voters: “cdnt give a XXXX 4 lst ordrs? Vote labour on thrsdy 4 xtra time.” So 21st century — give them alcohol and they won’t complain about student tuition fees.
It didn’t matter that the police, judges, doctors and the middle aged all grumbled that this was gutter politics — their children would appreciate it. And they did, but they didn’t just want a glass of wine after 11pm to drink with their cheese — they wanted five bottles of alcopops, five double Jack Daniels and coke, and five double vodkas and Red Bull before lying down in the snow and passing out. Since the new licensing laws were introduced, the number of hospital admissions for alcohol-related disorders and injuries has gone up by 69 per cent.
I remember spending a night in a hospital in a pretty market town in Norfolk with a doctor who had complained that he was now overwhelmed by vomit every weekend — he had to suction it out of one girl’s mouth to stop her choking to death. Another was so drunk that she urinated while I was holding back her hair so that she could throw up. Another’s friend had tried to bite off his nose after downing 28 units of alcohol.
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It can’t all be blamed on the changing licensing laws. Supermarkets began to compete, using alcohol as a loss leader. Two 12-year-olds had bought a bin-liner full of Carlsberg Special Brew and Diamond White cider for less than £5 to drink in the park all afternoon, before passing out in the playground and ending up on drips.
When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister it is easy to forget how pleased everyone was that, finally, here was a grown-up. He didn’t even attempt to like Arctic Monkeys. This was a Presbyterian brought up listening to his father’s sermons and swinging his moral compass rather than playing in a band called Ugly Rumours. Here was a man foursquare, serious, experienced and sensible who would put aside childish things.
As a down payment on this new era, he immediately promised to do something about 24-hour drinking. Extending pub-opening hours had been — along with the partial decriminalisation of cannabis — an indication that his predecessor didn’t give a XXXX about his responsibilities. Gordon would cure Britain’s addiction to alcohol.
As he said in his first conference speech: “Binge drinking and under-age drinking that disrupts neighbourhoods are unacceptable. To punish: let me tell the shops that repeatedly sell alcohol to those who are under age — we will take your licences away. To prevent: councils should use new powers to ban alcohol in trouble spots and I call on the industry to do more to advertise the dangers of teenage drinking.”
He followed up with a series of binge-drinking “crackdowns”. In 2007 he held a “secret summit” at Downing Street on the problem. In March 2008 it was “two strikes and you’re out” for off-licences caught selling booze to youngsters. In June 2008 it was going to become illegal for young people to “persistently” drink in public. Last October he wanted to ban free-drink promotions for women. In March pubs were going to be made to use smaller glasses.
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Finally, after all this talk, the Government has published an action plan but has failed yet again. Pubs and clubs won’t be allowed to promote cheap offers such as “all you can drink for £10” but happy hours will be allowed to continue. They must offer wine in 125ml measures but can also keep 250ml glasses. Speed-drinking games will be outlawed but ministers have backed down from taking on supermarkets over pricing. So Britain is stuck with the tanked-up and legless, but now customers can ask for a free glass of tap water to wash down the shots.
And it hasn’t even made a difference at the ballot box. According to Populus, fewer than 26 per cent of the iTouch generation think that they will vote in this year’s election. They will swap the politics of the voting booth for those of the saloon bar, and, as the poet Louis MacNeice put it, “find a factitious popular front in booze”.