In defence of lunchtime drinks

After the latest attempt to assassinate the President of the United States on Saturday, an attendee at the White House correspondents’ dinner was spotted making off with a couple of bottles of wine. As several people noticed, many Americans seemed to think that this was a greater outrage than the shooting itself, whereas British observers were firmly on the side of the minesweeper. 

Perhaps the difference is that Americans can afford to turn away free booze, but it seems more like another manifestation of the USA’s strangely prudish attitude towards alcohol. It is still less than a hundred years since Prohibition ended. The Anti-Saloon League is no more, but its place has been taken by “sober influencers”, gym bros and longevity-obsessed billionaires who preach the gospel of total abstinence. Last year, the number of drinkers in America fell to an all-time low, with barely half of the adult population touching a drop. 

We Brits cannot afford to be complacent. As another viral video released over the weekend showed, the American culture of puritanism has spread to these shores. Hannah Spencer, the recently elected Green MP for Gorton and Denton, has exclusively revealed that members of Parliament can be a bibulous bunch. In an interview with Politics Joe, she said: “Like, there’s a room where I walked past and I doubled back and looked in because people are just sat having a drink.” That room, I fancy, is what is known as a “bar” and there are nine of them on the parliamentary estate. There are also several pubs within walking distance which, rather wonderfully, have a bell that rings when MPs need to stagger back and vote. 

Americans would certainly disapprove of this and so does Hannah because, as she says, “I can’t imagine if a cleaner did that or someone working in a bank, like, had a few drinks and then went back to work, like, a bit, like, smelling of alcohol, like, that wouldn’t happen.” I, on the other hand, can imagine it because what Hannah is describing is lunchtime drinking, something that we Europeans have been doing for hundreds of years with great success. Long lunches — or PFLs, as Nigel Farage calls them — have been in decline in this miserable century, partly thanks to American corporate culture, and whilst I am not necessarily claiming that this has caused productivity to stagnate and mental health to decline, I will note that it has coincided with productivity stagnating and mental health declining.

Ms Spencer’s comments were received warmly by angry people on social media who complained that they aren’t allowed to drink alcohol before driving their bus/operating heavy machinery/performing surgery and therefore MPs shouldn’t drink either. They expressed outrage at the loophole that allows politicians to drink on the job while everyone else is banned from doing so. 

But everyone else is not banned from drinking. Even in these uptight times, there are plenty of trades and professions that are compatible with The Drink. I didn’t notice many actors agreeing with Hannah, for example. Or musicians. Or journalists. It is not hypocritical to say that it is fine for MPs to drink on the job, but not taxi drivers. Alcohol slows reaction times and is therefore incompatible with using chainsaws and flying aeroplanes. But an MP’s job is essentially to meet people, talk about politics and walk through doors, all of which can be done in a state of partial inebriation. 

Being an MP is not really a job at all. It is something people are rather than something they do. And they are an MP all the time, not just from 9 to 5. When they are in Parliament, a lot of the “work” involves hanging around, waiting to walk into whichever room the Chief Whip has told them to, often late in the evening. If this was your job and you spent your working life surrounded by politicians and lobbyists you’d need a stiff drink too. So long as MPs are not so drunk that they can’t tell Aye from No, they can uphold the best traditions of British democracy. 

It loosens the tongue, emboldens the heart and lightens the soul

Judging by his diaries, the life of Samuel Pepys MP was one long pub crawl. Not so much a lunchtime drinker as a breakfast drinker, he consumed wine by the pint. Winston Churchill was also fond of a sharpener in the morning to kick off another all day session. Herbert Asquith’s nickname was “Squiffy” for good reason. Drinking whisky during the budget was a proud tradition for Chancellors of the Exchequer until Gordon Brown put an end to it in 1997. And it wasn’t just alcohol. Before making speeches in the House of Commons, William Gladstone took opium in his tea and William Wilberforce used laudanum. 

I am not saying that politicians were necessarily any better for being soaked in booze but, like, they certainly weren’t, like, any worse. The philosopher Edward Slingerland has argued that Western civilisation was only made possible by generous servings of alcohol. It loosens the tongue, emboldens the heart and lightens the soul. We need more of it, not less. If Westminster’s boozy culture is out of step with the modern world, it is because the world has gone wrong.