One of the constants of Boris Johnson’s political career has been his opposition to ‘nanny state’ interventions in people’s lives. In 2006, he overshadowed David Cameron’s first conference as Tory leader by supporting mothers who were pushing pies through school railings in protest at attempts to make their children eat Jamie Oliver inspired healthy school dinners. As recently as last year’s Tory leadership contest, he was attacking the so-called sugar tax for being ineffective and hitting the poor hardest.
But, as I say in the Times this morning, in a discussion with some of his senior ministers and advisers last week, Boris Johnson told them, ‘I’ve changed my mind on this. We need to be much more interventionist’ on obesity. His change of heart has been driven by the now undeniable link between coronavirus and obesity.
In the Prime Minister’s case, the personal is political – he thinks he ended up in intensive care with the virus because of his weight. The government is fast coming to the view that one of the main reasons the UK has been so hard hit by this virus is because of how obese the population is: more than a quarter of Brits are.
The view in Whitehall is that there’s no guarantee that there’ll be a vaccine anytime soon, so the country has to work out how to adjust to this situation. As one of those at the heart of the government’s Covid-19 response puts it:
This virus is here to stay and we’re going to have to live with it. If obesity is the biggest driver after age, we need to be doing more right now to deal with it.
So, what is the government’s strategy on this going to be? Well, Boris Johnson is, I’m told, ‘obsessed’ with getting people to cycle to work. This would help people lose weight and ease overcrowding on public transport. But this is the politically easy bit. The more difficult question is whether to extend the sugar tax — something that is backed by senior ministers and some surprising people in No. 10.
What’s certain is that we’ll be hearing more from Boris Johnson about the need to lose weight. As one of his closest allies says, his own battle with the bulge gives him ‘permission to speak’ on this rather personal issue.
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