David Vance SubstackRead More
Did you see this video in which recently elected Green MP Han-allah Spencer slams Westminster’s “grim drinking culture”? She claims that you can literally “smell the alcohol” on MPs heading into votes and questioning how people on £90,000 of public money can justify sitting around drinking while making decisions that affect millions. Here is the clip of her making these points.
Now she does indeed have a point on professionalism. MPs should show up sober when voting on taxes, laws, and public spending. No one wants pilots, surgeons, or heavy machinery operators operating under the influence — why treat Parliament like an extension of the Strangers’ Bar? That said, I have been in the bar at Westminster and did notice any excessive drinking but she still has at least half a point.
However, at the very same time, Spencer’s Green Party leadership is pushing a radical overhaul of UK drug policy: “legalise, regulate and control” — including all currently illegal drugs under a public-health model. Zack Polanski has repeatedly backed legalising everything from cannabis to Class A substances like heroin and cocaine! He claims prohibition is a failure and calls for one big regulatory regime covering all substances, alcohol and nicotine included.
The Green’s own policy documents call for ending prohibition and creating a legally regulated market for recreational drugs, with different controls based on risk — but the direction is clear: move from criminal justice to state-supervised supply and normalisation.
The Greens are incoherent at best, hypocritical at worst. You simply can’t lecture high-paid MPs about the unprofessionalism of alcohol on the job then champion bringing far more potent, addictive, and damaging substances onto the legal market!
Alcohol is legal, heavily regulated, and it still causes harm — violence, domestic abuse, liver disease, lost productivity, and NHS costs. Harder drugs often bring even higher risks of addiction, psychosis, overdose, and social breakdown.
Legalising and regulating the harder stuff doesn’t magically eliminate those risks. In fact evidence from places that have liberalised (cannabis in parts of the US/Canada, or opioids elsewhere) show increased use, especially among the young, with mixed or negative results on overall harm. I bet this is not a big surprise to you!
I think her “no contradiction” defence — “it’s just about workplace intoxication vs. broader regulation” — doesn’t hold any water. If the Greens really believe alcohol is so problematic that MPs shouldn’t be drinking on duty, why advocate loosening controls across the board for MORE harmful substances??
Normalising supply and use of these dangerous substances while pearl-clutching about a few pints in Parliament looks like ideological claptrap. Parliament already has plenty of real problems. Adding a policy that risks flooding our streets with state-approved harder drugs while a Green MP sniffs at boozy colleagues underlines that the Greens are more interested in utopian experiments than hard-headed public safety. Tough talk on workplace standards is cheap if your flagship policy is to deregulate the substances that destroy lives far more effectively than any lunchtime pint.
