Is this the Britain of Victor Meldrew or Withnail and I?

Stony Stratford's high street could become the first in the UK to ban smoking. Photograph: John Watts-Robertson for the Guardian

I can't work out what the British public is most wedded to – civil liberties, private enterprise or fags. Paul Bartlett, a Tory councillor in Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire, has introduced a motion to ban smoking in all public places. Even outside. If it succeeds, Stony Stratford will have the first smoke-free high street in the UK.

"Everybody who lives in Stony, everybody who shops in Stony, truly loves Stony," Susi Whittaker told me from the gallery she runs in the high street. "Hence the bunting, baskets and flowers. Everybody wants to keep this a thriving market town. Nobody supports him. People who don't smoke don't support him. People who have kids and don't smoke don't support him."

Bartlett is well known for his zero tolerance views. He's a kind of mayor Giuliani for Milton Keynes or to put it another way "a total twat". So said Stony resident Gina Sherwood. "I think it's absurd. There are too many people against it. I don't know one person who is for it."

Bartlett's rationale is that walking up any high street you get smoke in your face which harms you and your children. It's an argument that has already worked in some part of America. The first city to go nuclear on the issue was Calabasas, California, which has had a ban on smoking outdoors since 2006. New York banned smoking from its parks and beaches last month, around the same time it legalised same-sex marriage. But such legislation sticks in the nicotined craw of British smokers, who point out that when you're outdoors there's a proliferation of fresh air.

Resistance is not limited to smokers, however. Whittaker doesn't smoke nor does Zoe Bridgewood, who also ticks the parent box. She said: "This is just victimising people. Can't we just be non-smokers? Why do we have to be anti-smokers?"

Matthew, who works in an estate agency in the town, said: "It's quite la-di-da around here. Not many people smoke. So it might send house prices up a bit. But they're too high anyway. I think it's a bit silly."

Though none of the people against the ban had ever met anybody who was in favour of it, I did find one. Helaine Whiteside said: "I think it would be good. Because of the nature of the town the pubs don't have gardens. Many are old coaching inns so the outside space is filled with the coaching houses, which people live in. So smokers have to stand on the street and they don't clean up after themselves."

This is a pub-centric and strangely familiar place, partly because it features the famous Cock and Bull pubs, from which the phrase "a cock and bull story" derives, and also because this is where the film A Cock and Bull Story was shot. It's also where Withnail and I was filmed, and everyone here seems extremely proud of this.

The town represents a dichotomy of two very distinct strands of Britishness – the Victor Meldrewish tendency to find everybody else annoying, especially when they're doing something noisy or smelly, and the Withnail Britishness of drinking until you're sick and finding it really amusing.

The purity of this war makes everybody's position more robust, and as certain as the local councillors are of success – many from both parties support the ban – so the opponents are sure they will overturn it, if necessary, with sheer attitude.

Tim, a 62-year-old smoker, said: "There's a groundswell of outrage about this suggestion." But will this be enough? What does a groundswell even look like? "Petitions have already gone around. We'll go on Tuesday and protest outside the meeting."

It's hard to say at this point how the division looks, whether all the people in favour of the ban are are councillors, and will have a vote on it, while all those opposed are outside the process, with only as much sway as a banner and a sense of outrage can provide.

Perhaps this is what such decisions looked like in America; the non-smokers on one side of the process – possibly having better access to the corridors of power because they don't waste time standing around outside smoking – and a load of baffled onlookers, wondering what just happened.

View the original article here