Labour: The Nanny State Has "Run Its Course" But We'll Carry On Regardless

That Andy Burnham is a card, ain't he? A bona fide, oleaginous, proper politician, and no mistake.

Mr Burnham said a Labour government would act ‘unapologetically, firmly and decisively’ on children’s diet, smoking and access to cheap alcohol.

Same old nanny state Labour. But hold on, what's this?

But for adults, he said the ‘finger-wagging nanny state message does turn people off’. ‘You know “don’t do this, don’t do that”. That’s run its course,’ he said. 

‘We’re saying, where is it right for the government to act and where is it right to let people make their own choices?'

An enlightenment maybe? A recognition that the incessant social engineering we are bombarded with by the political class and their tax-funded sock puppets is reaching Soviet levels, and that it's about time it stopped? You know, the same thing we've heard before from Cameron?

Because it is always right for adults to make their own choices Andy, especially since we pay your wages. This is why the "finger-wagging nanny state message" is pissing us all off (and sending a lot of your voters to UKIP), d'you see?

Well no he doesn't, because cheap alcohol and smoking are things that millions of adults freely choose to indulge in on a daily basis. So why is Andy's finger still wagging then? Well, because having got that false sympathy out of the way, off the little gobshite goes again.

We’re saying it’s absolutely right for the state to intervene, and probably do so even more decisively than we did when we were in government, to protect children. 

‘Because children don’t control the situations they’re exposed to, the environment they’re exposed to or the food that’s put down to them. Therefore I do think the state has an absolutely clear moral and intellectual basis for saying “we will act to protect all children”.

Now, can you think of a single 'public health' nanny state policy or proposal in the past decade which didn't involve - as the Free Society put it yesterday - using children as "tools or agents of the state"? No. Neither can I.

A perfect example is contained in Cyril Chantler's report on plain packaging.

I have heard no coherent argument as to how this purported separation occurs in practice and in my opinion a ‘spillover effect’ is highly plausible whereby packages that are designed to appeal to a young adult, also, albeit inadvertently, appeal to children. It seems to me that children and non-smokers are not, and cannot be, quarantined from seeing tobacco packaging and in my view once they are exposed to this packaging, they are susceptible to its appeal whether it is intended to target them or not.

Under those ridiculous rules, there is no real life scenario where the state can imagine a complete absence of people under 25 (the definition of young person has been changed, didn't you get the memo?); and therefore no area of human activity which affords adults freedom of choice without Labour deciding that they are entitled to interfere.

However, Burnham put out a limp message that Labour don't like the nanny state; even that they have decided it has "run its course", while at the same time installing a regime whereby just about any abuse of liberty is justified by politicians apologetically smiling, shrugging their shoulders, and imploring us to think of the children.

Clever, huh?

[Andy Burnham] also revealed he was ‘looking at’ curbs on e-cigarette advertising

You know, those new devices which are freely chosen by adults and where there is no evidence whatsoever that children are being harmed in the process ... but where kids are nonetheless being employed as a crutch for crushing objections to regulation regardless.

‘It’s trying to deal with the nanny state charge that gets thrown all the time whenever you try to do something on health.’

I think you've just dealt with it, Andy. Just say that you are not part of a nanny state - perish the thought! - but are actually in favour of adult free choice ... while doing the complete opposite.

That's how lying politicians operate, sadly.