Could Boris not only beat the virus, but obesity too?

“Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.”

The great British public is inclined to differ from Shakespeare’s Caesar. For two centuries and more, we have preferred lean leaders to corpulent ones. The skinny Pitts have outperformed the fat Foxes, with two notable exceptions: Winston Churchill and Boris Johnson. The latter, however, seems to have learned one lesson from his near-death experience as a Covid-19 patient. If you want to avoid dying of the virus, he is reported to have warned others, “Don’t be a fatty in your fifties.”

Now that the link between obesity and mortality in the pandemic is clear, the Prime Minister is on a mission: to persuade the nation to lose weight. “I’ve changed my mind on this,” he is said to have told colleagues last week. “We need to be much more interventionist.”

According to James Forsyth, the well-informed political editor of the Spectator, Downing Street staff say that their boss is “obsessed” with the subject. And no wonder: when Boris Johnson went into hospital with coronovirus only six weeks ago, he is thought to have weighed 17.5 stone, giving him a BMI well over 30, the level defined as clinically obese.

He has this problem in common with 27.8 per cent, nearly one in three, of his compatriots; in Europe, only Malta has a higher proportion. It is little consolation that the United States (at an alarming 36 per cent), New Zealand, Canada and Australia are all more obese than the UK. As a risk factor in Covid-19, only age is more significant.

As part of this drive to reduce obesity, the Prime Minister is determined to promote cycling to work. By reducing the pressure on public transport through a healthier lifestyle, he hopes to kill two birds with one stone. The lockdown has undoubtedly encouraged more people to switch from four wheels to two, but the acid test will come when traffic returns to normal and road safety becomes a bigger issue. More cycle lanes will help, but you need to be brave to ride a bike in a London rush hour.

What needs to happen is a fundamental transformation of British lifestyles. Last week, we highlighted here Dame Angela Maclean’s strictures on obesity. “Pandemic or no pandemic”, the Chief Scientific Adviser to the MoD warned,  “it’s better not to be obese.” Hitherto, such admonitions from officials have been stigmatised as “fat-shaming”. Among politicians, the smart thing to do has been to reassure voters that it’s fine to gorge on unhealthy foods rather than obey our guilty consciences — or even our GPs. David Cameron notoriously sided with mothers who passed pies to their children rather than let them be forced to eat healthy school meals. As a columnist, Boris Johnson himself has taken countless potshots at the “nanny state”. But such pandering to our national vice of gluttony should not survive the revelation that the obese are fully twice as likely to die of Covid-19.

“It’s alright for you thinnies,” Boris Johnson has been telling those around him. The fact that he has not generally been seen as fat, but as “stocky”, makes him the ideal role model to appeal to those in denial about their habits. It is a truism that some people find it much easier than others to keep their weight down. As a born-again crusader against obesity, however, the Prime Minister seems likely to reverse his scepticism about “sin taxes”, openly expressed during the election campaign. Matt Hancock regards the levy on sugary drinks as a “total triumph”; the food and drinks industry is braced for more taxes designed to alter consumption.

Rather than impose ever higher taxation on habits characteristic of the poorest members of society, however, the focus should be on improving lifestyle education for adults as well as children. There should be incentives for those who exercise and eat healthily, rather than penalties for those who don’t. Most people respond better to the carrot rather than the stick.

The hardest issues in tackling obesity concern personal freedom and self-esteem. Should advertising of unhealthy fast food and sugary beverages be curtailed or even banned, as tobacco has been? What about seating in cinemas, theatres and on aircraft? Given that obesity is often triggered by mental health problems or social deprivation, is it fair to make those who cannot control their weight feel even more self-conscious? Are public health campaigns against obesity merely adding insult to injury? Should society be ashamed of fat-shaming?

The Prime Minister is clearly giving thought to the right way to approach this issue. As a man who, despite reportedly losing at least a stone in the month since he left St Thomas’s, is still obese, Boris Johnson considers that he now “has permission” to talk about the problem frankly with the British public. He knows that leading by example is essential, that people are more likely to do as he does than do as he says. After such a life-changing crisis, we may be more open to changing our lives than ever before. But he needs to set the opposite example to that of America’s Coca-Cola-swilling, Big-Mac-guzzling President.

Like any proud father,  Boris hopes to see his youngest child, Wilfred, grow up. His own father, Stanley, is an octogenarian in rude health; his mother, Charlotte, is more fragile, having suffered for many years from clinical depression and Parkinson’s. If the Prime Minister wants to last the course and inspire the country to take more exercise, he needs to follow Norman Tebbit’s advice and the example of his fiancée Carrie Symonds, who campaigns on animal welfare. On your bike, Boris — and try eating less meat!