by Ted Newson, Institute of Economic Affairs intern and politics graduate
Government intrusion touches nearly every aspect of life in modern Britain. Even a simple pleasure, like enjoying a pint at the pub on a Friday, is being squeezed by the relentless growth of the tax burden driving prices ever higher.
Earlier this month, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) published their Nanny State Index in collaboration with the European Policy Information Center. This research showed that Britain has slipped three places since their 2023 report and currently sits as the European country with the seventh largest Nanny State.
The extent of this overreach becomes even clearer when examining specific policies, particularly those targeting smokers. Analysis reveals the UK as arguably the most oppressive country in Europe for smokers, driven by the second-highest cigarette taxes on the continent. This financial penalty is compounded by widespread smoking bans in public spaces, a blanket prohibition on all advertising, and severe restrictions on packaging and display. The cumulative effect is that smokers in Britain face relentless government intervention.
Further to this, the government has become increasingly aggressive in dictating what citizens should eat. The sugar tax is yet another example of the state trying to control consumption and profiting from added tax revenue while increasing prices to consumers.
Similarly, as it becomes increasingly expensive to function as a pub landlord, especially in London. Britain has seen average pint prices rise from £1.90 in 2000 to £4.52 in 2024. Since 2000, pub landlords have faced rises in business rates due to revaluations, VAT (rising to 20 per cent in 2011) and alcohol duty, especially when the escalator was implemented from 2008-2013. The collective weight of these policies has profoundly distorted the economics of socialising. For instance, the cost of one pint of craft beer, such as Neck Oil or Hawkstone, in a Westminster pub is now often comparable to a multi-pack of ten supermarket lagers. Such a stark financial incentive actively steers people away from community pubs towards drinking at home, often in isolation. This trend erodes the social fabric, fostering loneliness and, perversely, potentially exacerbating harmful drinking patterns – the very issues such policies often claim to address.
The relentless creep of the state isn't solely the result of targeted 'nanny' policies. It's also a symptom of Britain's chronic political short-termism, which incentivises governments to overspend and borrow heavily, often to create a temporary facade of achievement rather than delivering genuine long-term value for taxpayers' money. This means raising taxes wherever they can, especially on items which are known to cause health problems, framing this as paternalism when really it’s a simple tax grab. This reality explains why lifestyle choices such as drinking and smoking, have started impacting a much larger portion of our wallets than ever before. However, this need not be the case.
The persistent tendency of the British state is to infantilise its taxpayers, assuming they cannot make sensible choices without coercive financial prodding. If, instead of imposing ever-higher prices to dictate behaviour, governments simply offered guidance and trusted adult judgment, individuals could freely determine their own consumption habits. This stands in stark contrast to the current method of gradually engineering desired outcomes by making everyday items unaffordable through taxation
The imposition of 'nanny state' rules that govern personal choices, without a clear mandate from the electorate, is a direct affront to democratic principles. Let's be clear: British taxpayers do not want to be over-taxed. They would far rather see their spending in local small businesses boost those enterprises and their own purchasing power through lower prices, than have a significant portion siphoned off by the state.. The government should stop concerning itself with what its citizens are eating for breakfast and drinking after work and instead look to a model less aligned to a ‘nanny’ government and more akin to ‘government by consent’.
A leaner, more efficient state would naturally lessen the government's excessive demand for tax revenue. This would directly translate into significantly enhanced purchasing power for consumers, particularly if the array of taxes currently imposed on everyday lifestyle goods were abolished. Eliminating these numerous levies on dynamic lifestyle industries would act as a powerful stimulus for the wider economy, with ever-expensive London especially benefiting.
The recent TaxPayer’s Alliance quangos report shows how prevalent wastage is in Britain, with one video highlighting how the public-funded Advanced Research and Invention Agency wants to spend £50 million on outdoor geoengineering experiments, one involving trying to block out the sun. This acts as just one way the government wastes our money, with other projects such as HS2, expected to cost taxpayers £80 billion pounds or approximately 3 per cent of total GDP. If successive governments stopped trying to get involved in areas it shouldn’t and started putting peoples welfare first, perhaps the uniparty would be in better shape, with voters haemorrhaging to the Greens, Lib Dems and most notably, Reform. Going forward, the government must look to cut costs so that taxes can be cut across the board, easing pressures and making people’s lives more liveable.
Starting the slow process of legislating to turn Britain from a welfare state to a state of rugged individualism and independence from government is the only way of ensuring Britain future-proofs itself against the unstoppable march of the nanny state.