Sixty years ago, on St Valentine’s Day, the Labour Party elected a new leader: the 46-year-old chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Harold Wilson. It’s hard to imagine it now, but Wilson cut a dash as a young, vibrant, modern figure who understood the power of his image, and one of the most recognisable things about him was his pipe smoking.

His pipe was a prop of public relations genius: it allowed him to fiddle with the object and play for time when answering questions. It was also an absolutely classless accessory, hinting at avuncular steadiness and speaking of his home-spun West Yorkshire authenticity. He did smoke it from time to time, but in private he preferred cigars, often Romeo y Julieta — but these, especially the brand favoured by Sir Winston Churchill, would have been unacceptably plutocratic for the party of the workers.

In 2023, we live in a surprisingly Puritan age. It may not seem that way in the wine bars of the City, or in the nightclubs of our great provincial centres. Go to Newcastle’s Bigg Market on a Friday evening, and there is not much of the Roundhead about the place. We nonetheless have a hard-faced, disapproving manner towards our political leaders — some of whom certainly invite it on themselves — and we frown angrily at expensive dinners, first-class travel or any kind of luxury, great or small. Liz Truss, when international trade secretary, was castigated last year by a disapproving media for spending £1,400 on an official dinner with Katherine Tai, the US trade representative; the civil service had advised greater parsimony for a face-to-face with one of President Biden’s cabinet. In this climate, it is very difficult to imagine a leading politician being an unapologetic smoker.

This reflects wider society, of course. The Office of National Statistics records that around 13 per cent of the adult population (about 6.6 million people) are smokers, down substantially from about 27 per cent at the turn of the millennium. More or less, the number of smokers has halved in 20 years. More than six million smokers remains a substantial chunk of the population, but I would be astonished if you would find 13 per cent of MPs admitting to enjoying tobacco in whatever form.

Do we really expect our Westminster masters to be exemplars of clean living?

Wilson was the last prime minister to smoke without apology. Margaret Thatcher’s provincial non-conformism would never have entertained the habit. David Cameron described himself as a “former smoker” and said he’d been “reasonably successful” in giving up the habit. In 2017, however, he was photographed at the Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire, a cigarette between his fingers and a smile on his face which reminded everyone that he no longer had to care. He looked blissfully happy. Boris Johnson, his Eton-and-Oxford foe, admits to smoking a cigar to celebrate the birth of a child (which for him must be a near-ruinous habit).

Members of Parliament are in a peculiar position. The House of Commons has a Smoking Room, where only they can go, but the Palace of Westminster subjected itself to a voluntary smoking ban when they introduced a rather more compulsory one for the rest of England in 2007. (Technically, royal palaces were not covered by the legislation, but MPs — for once — recognised the reputational danger and imitated the public strictures.)

Some of them certainly do smoke, in the designated areas dotted around the Parliamentary Estate and, in greater comfort, in specific areas of the Terrace overlooking the Thames. Statistically there should be 86 MPs in love with nicotine, whereas those who still do often sport a furtive look as they light up. The exception here, as so often, is Kenneth Clarke. The former deputy chairman of British American Tobacco enjoys cigars and cheroots and has made it a trademark.

Why is there this supposed cloud of disapproval ready to deliver a thunderburst over an elected representative who freely and openly enjoys the evil weed? Dr Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, has famously been snapped puffing on a sizable cigar, but she is unusual in many ways. Any other senior politician would attract a huge amount of bad press if they were known to be smokers who were not actively trying to give up; Coffey admirably refuses to play the game. Do we really expect our Westminster masters to be exemplars of clean living in general? Or is it smoking that is particularly obnoxious to the man on the Clapham omnibus?

There is a moralistic mood in society now that people should not smoke, and so those who do are somehow weak. Cameron, as well as Nick Clegg and Barack Obama, had to frame their cigarette-smoking as something they fought against, rather than a lifestyle choice. I think I would rather see MPs as rounded human beings, some making decisions on the basis of balance, enjoyment against compromises on health — most of all simply not hiding their personalities from us. Come out of the nicotine closet, my friends. I am not sure if the Lords and Commons Pipe and Cigar Smokers’ Club is still wheezing breathlessly, but politicians should feel free to shuffle forward, out of the smoky corners, and say, “Yes, I smoke. I may not be perfect. But I’m not ashamed.”