Nannies v. nudgers

Colonel Gaddafi and his mad bald son are not the only has-been regime desperately clinging to power. In Britain, too, a gaggle of once-powerful but now isolated authoritarians is doing everything it can to continue dominating people’s lives. These unelected know-it-alls exerted an extraordinary and baleful influence over public life during the 13 years of New Labour rule — banning things they didn’t like, scaring the public witless, demonising fat kids as the great evil of our age — but they have seen their power wane in the Liberal-Conservative era. And they aren’t happy.

Yes, it’s the nanny staters, those public health officials and their journalistic cheerleaders who took killjoyism to dizzy new heights between 1997 and 2010. Once invited to advise government officials, to provide data to justify illiberal initiatives such as the public smoking ban, to lecture the British masses about how flabby and feckless we are, this nanny lobby now finds itself elbowed aside by a nudge lobby, with David Cameron and his coterie preferring to ‘nudge’ people towards healthy living rather than strongarm us towards five-a-day, safe-sex, no-booze purity in the fashion of those old monstrous Mary Poppinses.