France’s descent into pettifogging nanny statism is a glimpse into Britain’s miserable future

Starmer should learn from Paris – taxes on alcohol are a disaster for struggling small hospitality business owners

Show me a party in power urging even more nanny-statism on an already struggling population and I’ll show you an embattled regime which, deep down, believes it’s the pesky common people, with their irresponsible amusements, who are making the rulers’ life impossible. 
True, in the case of Keir Starmer’s Labour, which, at a smidgen over two and a half months, has broken all Western records for the shortest political honeymoon ever, it almost looks like a normal process: how best can we speed up our loss of political capital?
But I’ve been seeing this happening in France for a long time under Emmanuel Macron as well: the micromanaging of everything that should be left to citizens’ private choices, for the sake of some sunlit, ever-blurring future progress, with a fine disregard for practical consequences on ordinary people’s lives.
In the UK, Andrew Gwynne, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health, chose the Labour Party Conference at Liverpool earlier this week to suggest that “tightening up on some of the hours of operation” at pubs and bars (later slapped down by the Labour leader) should be considered as part of efforts to “tackle alcohol abuse”. The state of Britain’s poor health, he said, in fine Victorian mode, was “morally reprehensible.”
That most of those pubs have been feeling the pinch since Covid, compounded by the rise in costs and, soon, in taxes, matters not. Nor does the fate of Britain’s high streets, with their boarded-up businesses, like knocked-out teeth, and the attendant consequences – driving prosperity and morale down. “There are concerns that people are drinking too much,” Gwynne said, using a weaselly indefinite phrase – nothing to do with me, it’s Concerns.
As it happens, I am seeing entire Paris neighbourhoods affected by the same officiousness. The entire avenues barred to motorists because it will Help The Planet (rue de Rivoli is the most glaring example, with half the smaller shops closed, and the rest taken over by soulless clothing chains or LVMH-Dior megastores guarded by US Secret Service clones in Armani. And of course, there’s the War On Alcohol – this in a country that has reduced its consumption of wine by two thirds in less than a century.
There are differences with Britain – here, three decades after the ban on advertising any alcoholic drink, it’s the selling of wine and spirits by local groceries and convenience shops after sundown that’s now being targeted for almost two years, by an ever-repeated “exceptional” decree from the Préfecture de Police.
Supermarkets (but not bars, for some mysterious reason possibly not unconnected with their relationship with the Préfecture), are forbidden to sell beer, wine and spirits from 5:00pm to 9:00pm depending on area: the maps outlined in the decree would fool any would-be invader, as they are utterly incomprehensible, with one side of some streets “dry” and the others “wet”. In case you planned to nip down to the shop for a bottle of rosé to go with the dinner you’re about to whip up, tough luck on you.
As a result, shops that had barely survived Covid – and the touristic desert that were the over-policed streets of Paris during the Olympics – are now closing. I should declare an interest here. The corner grocery in my own street, not very far from the Champs-Elysées (which sounds very glamorous but feels more like living just off Leicester Square), is being killed by the same indifferent officiousness. 
Opened 28 years ago by Abdallah Fadini, who has the Southern Moroccan’s eye for fruit and vegetables rivalling the toniest Food Halls at Galeries Lafayette, it kept active and thriving 7 days a week, becoming a kind of local club where the locals, from the street’s concierges to the former Governor of the Banque de France, meet, chat, and occasionally help one another out. In a pretty unsafe neighbourhood (the 8th arrondissement ranks second for criminal activity in Paris), I know I can walk home at night and get help if needed. Or fantastic tomatoes.
Abdallah’s shop has been struggling with dwindling hope, and mounting debt. As an essential provider, he was allowed to open during Covid – but most of his clients who came during the workday stayed at home. The recent restrictions on alcohol sales have shattered all his hopes of getting back into the black, especially as the Paris Administrative Police have shut him down twice for sales minutes after the close-off time. 
His story is sadly common in Paris, a city that has been losing an average of 10,000 residents annually for the last two decades. But as in the case of Britain’s pub owners and regulars, the human cost is still discounted by our all-knowing, all-wise betters.