Dr Christopher Snowdon is the Head of Lifestyle Economics at the IEA
As laws become more preposterous and governments intrude ever further into the private lives of individuals, you might expect the public to revolt. Instead, the growing state has given rise to a strange breed of bootlicking gimps who go out of their way to bat for the government.
The journalist Tom Harwood was in Washington D.C. last month and tweeted a video of himself unscrewing the cap from a bottle of Coke with the caption “Sweet land of liberty”. The point was that he was able to fully remove the plastic cap without violently twisting and tugging its tether — a freedom that has been denied to residents of the EU since 2024 thanks to Article 6 of the Single-Use Plastics Directive.
The bottle-top law has been a gift to eurosceptics. It epitomises the over-reach of pettifogging bureaucrats, the malign influence of fanatical NGOs and the apparently limitless ambitions of the “European project” to involve itself in every aspect of people’s lives. It is annoying and yet futile, a pointless irritation, and a daily reminder of the EU’s preference for regulation over innovation, but that didn’t stop the bootlicking gimps from crawling out from under their rocks to shoot the messenger. The law was intended to stop people throwing their bottle caps in the ocean, but almost none of the EU’s apologists defended it on environmental grounds. There was some whataboutery (“The USA doesn’t have universal healthcare”) and there was a novel cope about the supposed inconvenience of having to hold a bottle cap in the opposing hand, but mostly they complained about Harwood having the nerve to complain. “You know you can just tear the attached caps off with very little force if you want to, right?”, said one. “You do know that if you have the strength greater than a 5 year old girl, that you can just remove the attached cap, right?”, said another.
There was a great deal of this kind of chat, along with the usual “Is this really the hill you want to die on?” straw men. The government’s sycophants are always keen to remind you that there are worse things happening in the world and, by implication, that if you aren’t tweeting about the worst thing in the world, you shouldn’t be tweeting at all. It seems to escape them that they are tweeting about a petty irritation themselves and that their energy is being more thoroughly wasted because they are wrong.
The same bootlickers were out in force recently when Reform UK proposed replacing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with a more light-touch data protection system based on the New Zealand model. Everybody complains about having to click “Accept Cookies” on every website they visit and since almost everybody accepts the cookies, the regulation is as pointless as a cap that can be easily ripped from a bottle. But because it was Reform who were proposing the abolition of this EU-derived regulation, it suddenly found some vociferous supporters. “Reform want to strip way our human rights! Reform want to take away our privacy! What’s the big deal about GDPR? It only takes a second to accept the cookies! JUST ACCEPT THE DAMN COOKIES!!”
It is easy to see the motivated reasoning in these two examples. Harwood is a GB News presenter and Reform UK is Reform UK. Both of the regulations emanated from the EU and it is awkward for Remainers that they have been the most visible EU “achievements” since Britain voted to leave. For those who have never got over the psychic shock of the referendum, it suits their cause to accuse eurosceptics, rather than the EU itself, of being obsessed with trivial.
But the bootlicking phenomenon runs deeper than that. When the government interrupted everybody’s Friday evening some weeks ago with a howling text message urging them not to have a barbecue, those who complained that it was a bit much were confronted by nanny state appreciators reciting the usual script. “It’s just a text message! You can turn the alerts off if you want to! Haven’t you got bigger things to worry about?”
It was the same story when Birmingham City Council announced plans for a blanket 20mph limit. Could there be any ill effects from slowing every vehicle in England’s second city down to the speed of a pushbike? Dare to ask and you will be met with a familiar refrain. “What’s the big deal? So you’ll reach your destination a few minutes later? It’s not the end of the world!”
But minor inconveniences soon add up. I wrote about the government’s plan to put vape products behind shutters in shops. The Impact Assessment rather conservatively assumes that this will lead to transaction times taking two seconds longer. That doesn’t sound like much, but when you add it all up it amounts to a cost of £43 million on retailers. It has been estimated that Europeans waste a total of 575 million hours per year clicking on cookie consent buttons which, when monetised, amounts to €14.3 billion. Those who defend GDPR don’t seem to mind this, although they suddenly find that their time is incredibly precious when the non-EU queue is longer than the EU queue at passport control. It then becomes the turn of the eurosceptics to say “It’s only a queue, mate! What’s the big deal? You don’t mind queuing at the supermarket, do you?”
And that is one of the problems with the “stop whining and get on with it” defence. It can easily be repurposed. It could even be used to defend laws banning certain people from sitting at the front of the bus and laws forcing people to wear yellow stars before they leave the house. “There are plenty of other seats available, lol! Are you too lazy to walk a few more steps?” “It’s just a badge, mate! It only takes two seconds to put it on!”
“Worse things happen at sea” is not the appropriate benchmark by which to judge public policy. A bad regulation does not become good by being easy to get around and a bad law does not become justifiable just because the inconvenience it causes is, in the subjective mind of the unaffected other, mild. In a free society, the government needs a damn good reason to make any imposition on the public, large or small. It is a tragedy that decades of state paternalism have encouraged millions of people to see the state as its shepherd and to instinctively back the government in any conflict between the government and the public.
This article first appeared in The Critic
The bottle top directive, was it not adopted here after we left the EU?
I would also like to mention of how regulations especially impinge on old people. If you lack strength or have arthritic hands modern packaging is a nightmare. But no account of this is taken when designing these measures. Age discrimination? Oops, another regulation.
Things which might appear trivial and absurd in themselves are generally symptomatic of a much deeper malaise underneath. They are the tip of the regulatory iceberg. If we peel away the most ludicrous items at the top we can then expose the next layer of interventionist lunacy underneath. That’s another reason why these things do matter and we are right to make a fuss.
I have another gripe with these plastic bottle tops. As a public spirited sort of chap I go litter picking several times a week; gets me out of the house and off X! To maximise the space in my litter bag I crush tin cans and plastic bottles underfoot before picking them up with my trusty picker. But if the caps are screwed on, which 80% of the time they are, I have to pick them up with my hands first, which I’d rather avoid for obvious reasons, to remove the cap and pour away any remaining content to allow crushing. This adds time and is potentially unhygienic. I bet the authors of the stupid law didn’t think of that!