Christopher Snowdon | The Spectator columnists & writers

When the COP26 climate change conference hits Glasgow at the end of October, the media will be out in force to discover how world leaders are going to meet their ambitious carbon emission targets. It will be on the front pages. Edited highlights will be on television. Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon will be elbowing each other out of the way to get in the limelight. Extinction Rebellion will be performing their doomsday japes outside. But when COP9 begins in November, few will notice. Admittedly, this event is being held online this year, but it would have flown under the radar even if it had been held in the Hague, as planned. It always does. Like COP26, it is a United Nations conference, but that is where the similarities end.

A salt and sugar tax doesn’t make much sense

What is the point of the National Food Strategy? When Henry Dimbleby was hired as Britain’s ‘food tsar’ several years ago, the idea was to develop some blue sky thinking and to have someone look at the issue with a fresh pair of eyes, but when he produced his first report last year, it contained the same generic, flat-pack, bone-headed, nanny-state recommendations that every other voice of the establishment had been calling for. So predictable were his conclusions that the government had already committed itself to implementing most of them by the time it was published and he resorted to moaning about Percy Pigs to give himself an angle. The second part of the strategy has now been published and it is, incredibly, even worse than the first.

Boris’s junk food crusade is absurd

The government is to ban 'junk food' adverts before the 9 p.m. watershed as well as restricting online food ads. Boris Johnson seems to have realised that he is overweight and so now we must all be subjected to an ever-growing assortment of gastronomic restrictions. The first of many problems, however, is that civil servants don't actually have a definition for 'junk food'. The category used instead is 'high in fat, sugar and salt' (HFSS), a designation that is ridiculously broad. So now certain foods that would normally fall into the category are exempt. Honey, olive oil, avocados and Marmite are among those reportedly saved. If this is a representative sample, it seems that fatty and sugary foods will be given the green light so long as the middle classes like them.

The insanity of Britain’s housing market

On the day the Office for National Statistics announced a sharp rise in consumer price inflation, albeit to a still modest 1.5 per cent, we discovered that house prices have jumped by a staggering 10.2 per cent in the last year. The average house in England now costs £275,000, close to ten times the average annual income. In 1992, the average house cost three times the average income. A housing boom during a pandemic in the wake of the deepest recession in 300 years doesn’t make a lot of sense, but a few recent events can partially explain it. After three lockdowns, there is pent-up demand, including for houses. The abrupt shift to working from home has led to a permanent change in how some people do their jobs.

The problem with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s war on obesity

With his little round spectacles and earnest expression, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is the Penfold to Jamie Oliver’s Dangermouse. Both men have been largely forced out of the restaurant business due to public indifference and now spend their time writing endless cook books and lobbying the government for tougher laws on food that is deemed high in salt, sugar and fat. This is a dangerous game for chefs to play since they use a great deal of salt, sugar and fat at work, but Oliver’s been getting away with it for the last twenty years and neither he nor Fearnley-Whittingstall do much cheffing these days in any case. Jamie’s restaurant empire has been reduced to a few pizza and burger joints in Gatwick Airport and Fearnley-Whittingstall has closed his restaurants in Plymouth and Winchester, leaving him with just the River Cottage Canteen in Axminister.

Why 2021 could be the year of economic Armageddon

The British economy is wrapped in bandages – we won’t know whether the wound has scabbed or turned septic until they are ripped away. By the time the furlough scheme ends in April, whole sectors of the economy will have been out of action or severely incapacitated for over a year. Cash grants and the job retention scheme, both riddled with fraud, have propped up zombie businesses, some of which would have gone bust in the last year even without a pandemic. Of the businesses frozen in March 2020, how many will come out of hibernation in April 2021? How many people on furlough will discover that they have, in effect, been on gold-plated unemployment benefit for a year? No one knows, but the signs are not good.

The great alcohol cover-up: how public health hid the truth about drinking

The text below is the basis of a talk given by Christopher Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, at the Spectator annual health debate 2016. The debate was entitled: ‘Can we trust health advice?’ Before answering the question of whether we can trust health advice we must first ask: ‘Which health advice?’ It varies so much over time and between countries. In 1979, the government advised men to drink no more than 56 units of alcohol a week. This was later reduced to 36 units, then 28 units and then 21 units. Last month, the Chief Medical Officer reduced it once again, this time to 14 units. Upon announcing this, she also asserted that there is no safe level of drinking and that the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption were ‘an old wives tale’.

Nicola Sturgeon’s Covid prohibition

So now we know the threshold at which Nicola Sturgeon pulls the trigger. If the number of daily hospital admissions for Covid-19 exceeds a tenth of the number recorded at the April peak, she will lay waste to the hospitality industry. From Friday, all pubs and licensed restaurants in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Lanarkshire, Forth Valley, Lothian and Ayrshire and Arran – where two-thirds of Scots live – will be forced to shut their doors for at least sixteen days. So too will snooker clubs, casinos, bowling alleys and bingo halls. In the rest of Scotland, pubs and restaurants will be allowed to serve food and soft drinks – but not alcohol – until 6pm. Cafés which don’t have an alcohol licence can also stay open until 6pm.

Spectator Out Loud

Spectator Out Loud: Jeff Fynn-Paul, Christopher Snowdon and Jo Deacon

25 min listen

Spectator Out Loud

Spectator Out Loud: Jeff Fynn-Paul, Christopher Snowdon and Jo Deacon

25 min listen

On this week's episode, Jeff Fynn-Paul argues that land taken over by European colonialists in North America wasn't 'stolen'; Christopher Snowdon says the economic scars of coronavirus will define the decade; and Jo Deacon explains the drink being hailed as a Covid cure by Madagascar's president.

The true cost of coronavirus on our economy

When future historians look back on 21st-century mortality statistics, they will struggle to find anything out of the ordinary in Britain in 2020. When they look at the economic data they could be forgiven for thinking we were hit by an asteroid. The Office for Budget Responsibility predicts a fall in GDP of around 12 per cent in 2020, the equivalent of having the 2008-09 recession twice in one year. The second quarter saw GDP fall by 20.4 per cent, breaking the record set during the Great Frost of 1709. The economy rallied by 6.6 per cent in July — which sounds impressive until you consider that it only took the economy back to where it was in the spring of 2013. The full impact on unemployment won’t be known before the furlough scheme ends, but the OBR expects it to treble to over four million, the highest number since the 1930s.

Farewell, Public Health England

Farewell, Public Health England. Hello, National Institute for Health Protection. As expected, the hammer has fallen on the agency that promised to ‘protect the public’s health from infectious diseases’ but floundered hopelessly when tested by coronavirus. PHE failed to expand diagnostic testing, failed to engage with the private sector, stopped contact tracing when the virus was just getting going, discouraged the use of face masks, refused to share infection data with local authorities and couldn’t even count the number of people who died of Covid-19 properly. Good riddance. According to Matt Hancock, its replacement will have a ‘single and relentless mission – protecting people from external threats to this country’s health’.

Boris Johnson’s absurd nanny state crusade

If reports in today's papers are to be believed, the government will propose a new raft of nanny state policies on Monday. This time the target is food. A ban on advertising sugary, salty and fatty food on television before 9 p.m. is said to have been given the green light. The government will also dictate where these products can be legally displayed in shops. No more Lindor at the entrance. No more bacon at the end of the aisle. Despite my libertarian disposition, I take a perverse satisfaction in some of this. The television companies that spent years hyping the childhood obesity ‘epidemic’ and demanding tough action from government are now set to lose £200 million a year in advertising fees. Channel 4 might finally reflect on the wisdom of employing Jamie Oliver to make one-sided agitprop.

Spectator Out Loud

Spectator Out Loud: Christopher Snowdon, leading article, Toby Young

21 min listen

Spectator Out Loud

Spectator Out Loud: Christopher Snowdon, leading article, Toby Young

21 min listen

Christopher Snowdon on Britain's lost demographic; this week's leading article on the Government's mixed messaging; and Toby Young on why he's in Jeffrey Epstein's little black book. Subscribe to The Spectator's first podcast newsletter here and get each week's podcast highlights in your inbox every Monday.

The lost boys: the white working class is being left behind

You can argue about the merits of pulling down statues, but it’s hard to make the case that mass protests serve no useful purpose. At the very least, they provoke debate and draw attention to uncomfortable topics that it might otherwise be easier to ignore. The recent protests have forced everyone to have difficult discussions about race, class, poverty and attainment. Any serious examination of the statistics shows that we’re pretty far from equal, but what the figures also show is that it’s wrong-headed and damaging to lump very different groups together. In these discussions politicians often lazily assume that all BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) people are the same, and that all white groups are equally privileged.

The Edition

The Edition: are white working class boys being left behind?

38 min listen

The Edition

The Edition: are white working class boys being left behind?

38 min listen

Boris’s war on obesity is a mistake

In less enlightened times, an outbreak of a deadly virus was taken as a sign of God’s displeasure and would be accompanied by the persecution of an unpopular minority. It was less than a coincidence that the scapegoats tended to be those of whom the Church took a dim view: heretics, ‘witches’ (i.e. unmarried women) and, above all, Jews. How neatly it all fitted into an existing narrative. The desire to fit the Covid-19 pandemic into a moral fable of what sinfulness means in a secular society has been palpable. One of the most puzzling features of the virus is the way in which it severely incapacitates certain people while leaving others virtually unscathed. It is unsettling to think that our fate could depend on the roll of a dice.

Are public health cuts to blame for the UK’s pandemic response?

As we begin to learn best practice in the fight against Covid-19, it is notable that the handful of countries that have reduced the number of new cases to zero have used diagnostic testing and contact tracing on a large scale and have recommended the use of face masks. After two frantic months, the UK has just about got a handle on testing, but its embryonic contact tracing app has the hallmarks of every government IT fiasco, and there are barely has enough face masks for health workers, let alone the general public. No country can prepare perfectly for a new viral pandemic, but Britain’s public health system has fallen conspicuously short. Why? The stock answer from many is ‘under-funding’ – but the NHS budget has continued to rise since 2010, albeit not at the unsustainable pace seen during the New Labour splurge.

Coronavirus shouldn’t be used as an excuse to expand the state

Since this is the nearest most of us have ever got to living under the Blitz, I’ve been re-reading George Orwell’s The Lion and the Unicorn. Written in London in 1940, it begins with the famous line: ‘As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.’ The first part of the book, titled ‘England Your England’ contains more quotable lines per page than anything not written by Shakespeare. It is here that Orwell explains why he loves Britain, warts and all. The rest of the book, in which he makes the case for 'democratic socialism’ is maybe less well known, but is characteristically clear and unambiguous. Socialism, he says, means that ‘the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee.

The truth behind the election’s so-called fact checkers

All election campaigns see politicians exaggerate, stretch the truth and make promises they can't keep. But if a report issued in early December is anything to go by, the 2019 general election campaign was a particularly dishonest affair - and one party was particularly guilty. On 10 December, Metro reported: Similarly, the Independent reported: Websites which make no attempt to be impartial were more vociferous. Under the headline, The Tory war on truth – and how to fight back, Open Democracy reported: Independent fact checkers have found that 88% of Tory Facebook adverts contain lies, while 0% of Labour’s do. After the election, the (admittedly risible) Canary asserted that: The 2019 election was won on the back of lies – and Facebook helped This was echoed by losing Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen when she appeared on Newsnight the day after the election, as well as by Richard Burgon on Sky two days later.

Do we need to worry about air quality in Britain?

Is polluted air still a problem in Britain? When it comes to smog and pollution, most of us think about rapidly-industrialising city likes Shanghai and Delhi rather than London. Yet the research tells a different story: the Royal College of Physicians estimates that 40,000 deaths a year can be attributed to air pollution, and that the wider health problems resulting from toxic air – which include asthma, cancer, and stroke and heart disease – could cost the UK economy more than £20 billion every year. They’re staggering numbers – so why don’t we hear more about the problem? On 17 June 2019, The Spectator gathered a group of politicians, academics and other experts together for a lunch to discuss this issue and establish what actions need to be taken.

Labour should scrap state schools, not private ones

Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner has promised that if Labour wins the next election it will use its first budget to ‘immediately close the tax loopholes used by elite private schools and use that money to improve the lives of all children.’ This slab of red meat went down well with the class warriors at the party’s conference in Brighton, where there were doubtless plenty of teachers in attendance, but it wasn’t enough. Labour conference not only voted to withdraw charitable status from private schools, but to abolish them altogether. This was described, rather euphemistically, as ‘integrating all private schools into the state sector’ by Holly Rigby of the not remotely euphemistic Abolish Eton campaign.

How Canada failed to smash the cannabis black market

I had forgotten how much I disliked cannabis until I found myself under its influence, in the rain, trying and failing to find Toronto’s Union Train Station so I could get to the airport and go home. The plan had been to enhance my mood for a long journey, floating back to the UK in a higher state of consciousness. In practice, I just got confused, wet and was lucky to make my flight. I had intended to purchase the kind of low-THC, high-CBD weed that disappeared from Britain’s black market when skunk took over in the 1990s. Put simply, THC is the psychoactive component that gets you high but is associated with psychosis, while CBD is the antipsychotic component that gave cannabis its natural balance before it was bred out of the plant by drug dealers.

The state of UK energy: Where do we go from here?

On the evening of Monday 3rd June, The Spectator gathered a group of experts together for a dinner to discuss the challenge of bringing the UK’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. The dinner was held the night before the Spectator Energy Summit, with both events being chaired by Andrew Neil. With the permission of the invited guests, what follows is a brief summary of the discussion. David Wright (Director Electricity Transmission and Group Chief Engineer - Electricity, National Grid) began with the observation that they were meeting on the seventeenth consecutive day in which coal had played no part in the UK’s energy supply, a record in the modern era. As Andrew Neil pointed out, wind was currently providing 25 per cent of the country’s energy needs, but the biggest single component - 40 per cent - was gas.

Trying to control our waistlines is beyond the government’s power

James Cracknell, the athlete turned anti-obesity campaigner, was the subject of sniggering and derision in April when he said that North Korea and Cuba had got a ‘handle on obesity’. With impressive understatement, he attributed this to both countries being ‘quite controlling on behavioural trends’. It was a bad point poorly made, but in a roundabout way he drew attention to the major obstacles faced by those who want to reduce obesity rates in the rest of the world: freedom and affluence. Only Venezuela was missing from his list. Its people lost an average of 19 pounds last year as its basket-case economy unravelled, but this only serves to underline the point. Even the most fanatical nanny statist would hesitate before endorsing grinding poverty as a weight-loss strategy — and yet it is the only thing that seems to work.

The UN’s warning to Syrian smokers is beyond parody

You really can't make this stuff up. With hundreds of thousands of people dead and millions fleeing for their lives, the failed state of Syria is being told by the World Health Organisation to concentrate on... plain packaging. In a statement last week, the UN health agency warned that 'notwithstanding the current crisis in the country,' Syrian officials should collaborate with the UN health agency to control the use of tobacco and water pipes among its people, especially young adults, women and teenagers. This is rather like telling passengers on the Titanic that 'notwithstanding the iceberg' they should collaborate with staff to tidy away the deckchairs. WHO's Syria representative, Dr. Elizabeth Hoff, warned that using tobacco and water pipes endangers the health and lives of smokers and people around them.

The myth of the ‘middle class drink epidemic’

With alcohol consumption falling every year for over a decade it is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain the myth that Britain is in the grips of a drinking epidemic, but where there’s a will there’s a way. One method is to focus on whichever group is drinking the most. Even though everybody is drinking less, some people are bound to be drinking more than others and that means scary headlines. Inconveniently for the doom-mongerers, the people who are drinking the most happen to be the middle-aged and middle-class. It would be a better story if the heaviest drinkers were the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, but the evidence clearly shows that they are in fact the white collar professionals.

Vapers deserve to be angry - they are under attack

There is a perception - on Twitter at least - that vapers are angry and abusive. Ben Goldacre recently described ‘e-cigarette campaigners’ as ‘vile... obsessive, vindictive, abusive, and to an extent that is clearly dubious’. This inevitably led to a string of replies from bewildered vapers that may have confirmed his view, although the vast majority were polite. From what I’ve seen, vapers are no more likely to be offensive than any other punter on social media, which is admittedly a low bar. After the referendum on Scottish independence and the general election, not to mention the periodic bursts of outrage for which Twitter is notorious, I have seen much worse in recent months than a few e-cigarette users complaining about junk science and needless, destructive legislation.

The anti-smoking pressure group whose wackiest ideas always become law

Every few years, Action on Smoking and Health draws up a wish list of all the policies it would introduce if it was king for the day. It then spends the next few years lobbying ferociously and watches with a satisfied smirk as every single one of their brainwaves becomes the law of the land. The manifesto of this tiny pressure group is, in effect, the manifesto of whichever party is in power. The only difference is that governments often ignore their own manifesto commitments (such as Labour’s 2005 pledge to exempt private members clubs from the smoking ban) whereas the ASH manifesto is always implemented to the letter. ASH’s last legislative programme – 2008’s 'Beyond Smoking Kills' – became obsolete when the Conservatives acted on its wackiest idea, plain packaging, earlier in the year.

The BBC swallows more fanatical nonsense from Action on Sugar

Action on Sugar, the bastard offspring of Consensus Action on Salt, has noticed that dried fruit contains sugar. As with every utterance from the pressure group, the BBC thinks this is newsworthy. Based on an unpublished undergraduate research project, Action on Sugar says that 85 per cent of fruit snacks' contain more sugar than 100 grammes of Haribo sweets – 'with some containing over 4 teaspoons of sugar!', as the excitable press release proclaims. In these intellectually stunted times, a teaspoon of sugar is rapidly becoming a unit of harm that requires no further explanation. To be clear, a teaspoon of sugar only contains 16 calories. As an adult male, I am told I need 2,500 calories a day to maintain a healthy weight.

Today

Thursday

Thursday

Wednesday

Tuesday

Friday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Saturday

Thursday

Wednesday

Friday

Saturday

Thursday

Friday

Thursday

Monday

Monday

Thursday

Monday

Tuesday

Tuesday

Sunday

Tuesday

Friday

Wednesday

Monday

Sunday