Harry Mount

Jog on

Bring back the fat Tory politicians of yesteryear

issue 13 July 2019

Forget the cigar, the homburg and the V-for-victory sign. If Winston Churchill were around today, he’d be pounding the streets in T-shirt, shorts and chunky trainers. Jogging is an almost compulsory obsession for any Tory alpha male. Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are forever out running; Michael Gove has lost a drastic amount of weight racing around west London; and Boris has revealed he’s down to 15 and a half stone, from 16 and a half.

He’s also declared he’d freeze obesity taxes on fattening food — the answer to losing weight was more exercise, he said — and admitted to failing to keep up a vegan diet (he likes cheese too much). But he is certainly looking slimmer since he started going out with Carrie Symonds, 24 years his junior. If he can’t shrink the age gap, he can shrink the weight gap. When he was foreign secretary, he used to go jogging with his security team.

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