SARAH VINE: We do not want Starmer’s junk meals nanny state… we’d like mother and father to say simply ONE factor to their tubby tyrants

Every parent needs to learn one small but important word: ‘No.’

It may be short, but used correctly and consistently, it is mighty.

Without it, children grow up unable to determine right from wrong.

And yet, these days, parents who know how to say it are rarer than hen’s teeth.

Take the Government’s shiny new ban on junk food advertising. From next October, foods that are high in fat, sugar or salt – such as cakes, biscuits, ready meals and crisps – cannot be advertised at all online, or before 9pm on TV.

The aim is to tackle the ever-expanding problem of childhood obesity. Almost one in ten reception-aged children is now obese, and some 20 per cent suffer from tooth decay by the age of five.

Bad diets combined with other factors such as lack of exercise mean that many of these youngsters go on to become obese adults – with all the associated health issues and poor quality of life that entails.

In the long run, of course, they end up costing the country a fortune in healthcare and benefits.

None of this would be necessary if parents learned to say ‘no’ more often: if, instead of taking the path of least resistance, they stood up to their tubby tyrants and refused to give in. No to sweets and fizzy drinks, no to nuggets and chips, no to takeaways. Not all the time, of course, but most of the time.

But that’s not something that happens any more. ‘No’ seems to have become a dirty word in parenting. All must have prizes – and, it would appear, Happy Meals. And so Health Secretary Wes Streeting is channelling his inner Nanny McPhee, and putting us all on the naughty step.

Will it work? The likelihood is slim.

According to the Department of Health’s own assessments, these measures are projected to reduce children’s exposure to such adverts by just 8.9 seconds, which will result in a net reduction of precisely 2.1 calories from their daily diet. As the Mail’s health editor Shaun Wooller pointed out yesterday, that’s less than a tenth of a jelly baby.

The difficulty is there are so many other factors at play here. The proliferation of fast-food outlets in close proximity to schools, for example, or the fact that crisps and chocolates are invariably cheaper and more easily available than ‘real’ food.

Many families are too busy, too lazy or simply too inept to cook healthy food from scratch (after all, it’s years since home economics was taught in schools).

The games console has replaced the games pitch. Add to that the rise of the Deliveroo culture, with all manner of high-calorie treats delivered straight to the door in just a few clicks, and it’s not hard to see why our children are so fat.

None of this really has anything to do with advertising. Junk food commercials were just as colourful and compelling in the Seventies and Eighties – arguably more so given the almost total lack of regulation. Remember The Honey Monster? Tony the Tiger? The Cadbury’s Smash aliens? Ronald McDonald? But there was no obesity crisis then.

No, that has been caused by profound cultural changes over several decades, and by a fundamental deterioration in societal standards overall. Stopping little Kevin from seeing a Dunkin’ Donuts advert isn’t going to change any of that.

After all, these harmful foods will still be on sale. At the railway or bus station, in the supermarket or corner shop, part of your meal deal. And they will remain, in many cases, cheaper than healthier options – and invariably much harder to resist. Unless you change those fundamentals, you won’t ever eradicate obesity.

Ultimately, the only belts this policy will tighten are those of the broadcasters, advertisers and similar industries, whose losses, according to some calculations, will easily run into the hundreds of millions. All enterprises, let us not forget, on which thousands of jobs and livelihoods rely.

But as we’ve already seen from this Labour administration, job losses, especially in the private sector, are not really something to worry about.

In fact, you could argue that Labour’s aim is to restrict private enterprise and freedom of choice as much as possible (see also private schools, the farming tax and the recent hike in employers’ national insurance) while expanding the reach of the public sector (repeated pay increases and gold-plated pensions). And if that means state censorship, then so be it.

In that respect, this ban serves Labour’s aims perfectly.

It bashes precisely the sort of people this Government likes to bash, broadens the scope of the Nanny State, limits individual choice – and arguably restricts free speech by cutting off revenue for broadcasters, internet platforms, independent content creators, publishers and other organisations who rely on advertising revenue to fund their work. Clever.

If you don’t believe me, just look at what Sadiq Khan, Labour’s ‘trailblazing’ Mayor of London, has engineered.

He brought in his own ban on junk food advertising on the capital’s public transport network in 2019 and it has been rigorously enforced.

Back in March, for example, it emerged that the comedian Ed Gamble was forced to redesign his tour poster because it featured him tucking into a hot dog. The offending sausage fell foul of Khan’s rules – and had to be replaced with a cucumber, with somewhat surreal results.

A company advertising artisanal cheeses was banned because the fat content of its products was too high.

But then, last week, in the run-up to the vote on assisted dying in the House of Commons, Tube stations were suddenly festooned with posters from the pressure group Dignity in Dying. In one, an attractive blonde in stripy satin pyjamas dances around her kitchen as though she has just won the lottery.

‘My dying wish is that my family won’t have to see me suffer,’ reads the caption.

In another, a woman smiles as she strums a guitar. Again, the caption reads: ‘My dying wish is to play out with the ones I love.’ The overall impression is that assisted dying is very far from the last resort of desperate people, but an attractive and rather cool lifestyle choice.

So, in other words, no cheese or sausages for you, kids – but if you want to top yourselves, go right ahead. Tell me, what kind of twisted logic is that? Transport for London (TfL) insisted that the death adverts were ‘compliant’ with its rules.

But it doesn’t end there. Recently, TfL also gave the green light to posters featuring the controversial Muslim preacher Ismail ibn Musa Menk, known as Mufti Menk. Pictured surrounded by flaming American dollar notes, he is advertising an Islam-compliant financial vehicle.

Mr Menk, who once preached that gay people were ‘worse than animals’, has been accused of pushing ‘segregationist and divisive teachings’ and is banned from Singapore and Denmark for his extreme views.

And yet apparently none of those things are a problem under Mr Khan. Once again, Labour apparatchiks prove it’s one rule for them – and a sharp smack across the knuckles with a ruler for everyone else.

Of course we need to tackle the obesity crisis in this country. But censorship and surrendering control to the Nanny State is not the way to go about it.

At the end of the day, the only growth this policy will stifle is that of the nation’s creative industries – while contributing to the ever-expanding waistline of the bloated public sector.

In other words: Labour’s dream, everyone else’s nightmare.