During COVID, the British government used so-called ‘nudge’ tactics—which one behavioural scientist later said “violate[d] some core ethics in psychology”—to boost compliance with lockdown rules.
Now the threat of the virus has gone, officials appear to be lining up to use another tactic to improve the nation’s health: nagging.
Talking at Labour’s first conference in government in more than a decade on Tuesday, public health minister Andrew Gwynne suggested that “nagging” gets people to look after their health:
Even if I’ve got my arm half hanging off, it’s only the nagging of my wife that I need to go and see a doctor that means I give in and see a doctor.
He added that recent attempts to tackle obesity, such as a sugar tax on soft drinks, have had “zero impact,” suggesting that his government might be willing to take even more of a nanny-state approach. This, of course, would be in line with Labour’s plans to, for example, hand investigators access to personal bank accounts and to limit freedom of speech online.
This is the same public health minister who earlier in the week suggested his government might force pubs to close early, “particularly where there are concerns that people are drinking too much.” Labour officials said—believably or otherwise—there are no such plans under consideration.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s team is also pushing ahead with a ban on smoking in smoking areas, which pubs have warned will be terrible for already-struggling businesses. And Gwynne is now reportedly considering banning unhealthy food on public transport, too.
Responding to the public health minister’s comments, Stephen Daisley wrote in The Spectator that Labour appears “determined” to offer “five years [at least] of nagging and tutting”—five years of telling Britons:
You drink too much. Stop smoking. That’s high in calories. You can’t say that anymore. You’ve used the wrong pronoun.
“If,” Daisley added, “you want a vision of the future, imagine a dreary barrister and a sensible bob reporting you to HR—forever.”
