BRITAIN MAY well be suffering from a blight of binge drinking; Tony Blair, on the other hand, is surely afflicted by an outbreak of binge thinking.

The latest leaked proposals concerning his “Respect” agenda merely reinforce the similarity between those plans and the political party of the same name founded by George Galloway. Both are bold, brash and bonkers. There is, however, an important difference between the two Respect programmes. There is the slight risk that the one championed by Mr Blair might be implemented.

A bizarre syndrome affects all prime ministers in their third term and, for some inexplicable reason, it also drags in Sir Richard Branson. Soon after her 1987 election triumph, Margaret Thatcher looked out of the window while being driven in her official car to Heathrow Airport, noted a large amount of litter on the motorway, and declared that something had to done about it. Mr Branson — as he was back then — was charged with inspiring a short-lived (and rightly lampooned) national crusade to rid these shores of carelessly discarded rubbish.

Mr Blair has plainly been informed that the country is now awash with empty beer cans, the contents have being consumed by an increasingly inebriated and unruly population. He wants to act. This time, though, Sir Richard is among the villains of the piece and not the saviour. His Virgin trains may, henceforth, be as devoid of alcohol as Saudi Railways. Customers will be obliged to travel from Bournemouth to Glasgow (a journey that takes about the same time as the Trans-Siberian Express trip) without so much as a whiff of a gin and tonic or a small bottle of Côtes du Rhône.

This is lunacy. It is, alas, not the only part of the “Respect” campaign that would drive you to drink on a railway carriage provided that you had somehow managed to smuggle the wherewithal on board. At a recent meeting chaired by the Prime Minister at Chequers, it has emerged, 40 of these unappealing and impractical ideas were floated.

They included such notions as appointing a “visible local figure accountable for respect” in every community (they are to be informally designated as the “sheriff”, although “gauleiter” may be more appropriate); denying state benefits to those unwilling to attend a “rehabilitation scheme” (this may come to be known as the Pete Doherty Memorial Initiative); and empowering councils to seize the property of those considered to be a public nuisance, but not convicted of any offence (hope yet for those rendered unemployed by the demise of Pol Pot’s Cambodia). On top of that, any aspiration that a bus company may have had to double up as a wine bar or a cocktail outlet will be thwarted. This Respect stuff does not sound much fun at all.

The conclave at Chequers was hailed by one of those who took part as a “brain-storming session”. If so, Mr Blair and those who participated with him should not enter themselves for a pub quiz any time soon. It is not “brain-storming”, but the intellectual equivalent of the activity that the Prime Minister has taken it upon himself to eliminate. Instead a policy being consumed in moderation, preferably in the mature company of others, perhaps accompanied by a meal, followed by a quiet stroll home, it is being chucked back in huge quantities with little care for the consequences and public fighting afterwards is all but inevitable. It is binge thinking. It is not a pretty spectacle.

It also constitutes the worst aspects of the Blair approach to governing. The Respect agenda is almost comically imperious in its ambitions, shockingly vague about the details of implementation and betrays a disturbing absence of a clear sense of personal prime ministerial priorities. It starts with the valid identification of a social ill or imperfection, moves swiftly to the assumption that for every question there must be an answer minted in Whitehall and ends with the conclusion that what is required is a “specialist” bureaucracy or “unit” with its “dedicated tsar” and an “autonomous” budget and a more “can-do” attitude toward its business. Binge thinking thus becomes public policy. In the desire to be seen “doing something”, schemes are drawn up that are less back of an envelope than back of a postage stamp.

None of which is to deny that there isn’t antisocial behaviour about — though there are already several Whitehall departments, hundreds of local authorities, thousands of agencies, a small army of admirable charitable institutions and many commendable individuals attempting to do something about it.

They could doubtless be better co-ordinated and some might be better managed. This should be a priority for ministers. It is staggering arrogance and folly to assume that establishing a small cadre of civil servants close to Downing Street armed with a sum of money (£90 million) that comprises approximately 0.015 per cent of public expenditure and assisted by provisions in ever-more draconian legislation will somehow “fix” the situation. More humility, patience and realism are needed. The irony of the whole “Respect” ethos is that it is so disrespectful to people and to bodies that have been fighting in these trenches for ages.

The Prime Minister needs to think more deeply but less widely about what he wants to achieve in his remaining period in office. There are areas of government — terrorism and the threat of Islamist extremism, education and welfare reform — where he should devote his attention and his energy. Alcohol provision on trains should be left to the Home Office and the Department of Transport.

In the midst of the Cabinet dispute about how far to restrict smoking in pubs last week, one option promoted was to allow for “sealed rooms” to segregate those who like to have a puff. A sealed room in Downing Street to protect Mr Blair from some of his courtiers may be the best means of containing his binge-thinking tendencies.

Read previous articles by Tim Hames here

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