Labour’s obesity crisis

PMQs began with a question about obesity from Labour’s Kerry McCarthy. The crisis has reached breaking-point, she said. Our chubby 11-year-olds are now even chubbier than America’s chubby 11-year-olds. ‘The voluntary approach simply won’t work,’ she said.

Her colleagues, crushed and squeezed together, bore out the truth of this statement. ‘The voluntary approach,’ (or ‘turning down that extra Hobnob at teatime’), has certainly failed to stop Labour’s fat-cats from cramming their faces with yummie treats galore. The opposition party is obesity’s A-team. The over-achievers of over-eating. A casual glance across their heaving benches reveals prop-forward after prop-forward, and bouncy-castle after bouncy-castle. And the gods of chocolate do not discriminate between the sexes. Billy Bunter jostles with Miss Piggy. Hattie Jacques wheezes alongside the Michelin Man. This, of course, is not the members’ fault. Subsidised grub in parliament encourages them to bulk up on carbs. And the electoral system itself is anti-slimming. The average Labour MP has little reason to work up a sweat by pounding the streets, even at election time.