Let's Applaud Red Ed's Fat-Shaming Manifesto

Three cheers for Ed Miliband! Yes, you read that right. Breitbart London reported yesterday that Comrade Miliband is planning a war on waistlines, banning candies from the register and instituting a TV “curfew” on ads for unhealthy snacks that might appeal to kids. And you know what? I’m all for it. 

I know, I know. I’m a traitor to the cause of freedom. I ought to be fulminating about the presumptuous, nannying dreadfulness of it all. But aren’t you just ever-so-slightly powerless to resist the prospect of all that state-sanctioned fat-shaming–and how absolutely furious it will make Left-wing newspapers like the Guardian?

More delicious than a deep-fried Mars bar, if you ask me.

When you think about it, there are all sorts of benefits to the Leader of the Opposition’s plan. As others point out, Gary Lineker’s torturous ads for Walker’s crisps are unlikely to be shown in X Factor ad breaks any more, because too many children enjoy the show and might be tempted to reach for a pack of prawn cocktail in one of the intervals.

A lottery fund to build new skateboard parks and basketball courts sounds like a capital idea, as does making sure every child can swim at an early age and that all our kids know how to ride a bike. For many years I attended a rural grammar school and if I hadn’t known how to ride one–as a lot of kids, mystifyingly, did not–life would have been considerably more miserable.

And who can say they will really miss being nagged by their children for a stick of Starburst at the checkout, just as you’re trying to find your reward card while not dropping the milk or losing the other toddler, who has temporarily disappeared from view.

Of course, there may be some unintended consequences. I dare say the Shadow Chancellor will want to cut down on the late-night kebabs in the weeks before appearing in public to defend this plan. And just think of poor Red Ed having to distance himself from liberal mega-bore Michael Moore on grounds of corpulence. 

I also worry that Miliband risks alienating the wobblier end of his feminist constituency. You know, the sort of women who stop shaving and start inhaling Ben & Jerry’s just to make the point that they don’t care about “patriarchal demands on feminine beauty.” To be fair, when they get properly stuck in to the Big Macs and ooze over the line into elephantine androgyny, you can’t tell what gender stereotype to hold them to any longer, so they do sort of have the last laugh.

At this point I should say clearly that I have no time for Labour’s plans to put up the price of cheap booze or drive fags out of existence–ideas which were leaked in the same document as Miliband’s fat-shaming brainstorm. But that’s primarily because heavy drinkers and especially heavy smokers are already taxed to high heaven and put way more into the system than they take out with the occasional lung transplant or stomach pump.

It also seems strange that he would want to attack the poor by driving up the price of alcohol–one of the few remaining pleasures in the bleak existence of those condemned to hopelessness and destitution on benefits by the previous Labour government.

But, on the food front, at least, it’s trebles all round. Only best make your tipple a vodka soda, dear reader: the last thing you want is some shrieking whippet from the social announcing that you’re not fit to raise kids because she spotted a bottle of Baileys in the fridge.