Fat Chance

The Labour government is set to give weight-loss drugs like Ozempic to fat, unemployed people to get them back to work

The UK’s Labour government is set to give weight-loss drugs like Ozempic to fat, unemployed people to get them back to work.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced the new policy a few weeks ago, and was backed by the PM.

“I think these drugs could be very important for our economy and for health,” Sir Keir said.

“This drug will be very helpful to people who want to lose weight, need to lose weight, very important for the economy so people can get back into work.

“Very important for the NHS because, as I've said time and again, yes, we need more money for our NHS, but we've got to think differently.

“We've got to reduce the pressure on the NHS. So this will help in all of those areas.”

In fact, it won’t be the headline-grabbing Ozempic that’s used, but plucky competitor drug Mounjaro, made by US pharma giant Eli Lilly. In an investment worth £280 million, Lilly will participate in a first-of-its-kind medical trial in the UK, with 3,000 clinically obese people being given Mounjaro for a period of five years to see whether chemically aided weight loss gives them the kick they need to get off their sofas and back into the job market.

On paper, at least, if you’re a member of the Labour Party and suffer the mental limitations typical of membership, this probably sounds like a good idea. Give all the fatties this new miracle drug and their fatness will be cured and suddenly they’ll be willing and able to work again.

It sounds so simple, so plausible. And the problem of unemployment due to long-term sickness is only getting worse. According to the Office of National Statistics, the number of people out of work for this reason, many of whom are overweight or, increasingly, obese, reached 2.75 million in the three months to August. Obesity is an enormous strain on the public purse and on the NHS. As Keir Starmer said, maybe we really do have to think differently.

On paper: plausible. But in reality, this is a policy whose implications simply haven’t been thought through.

The policy shows, first of all, the degree to which health and especially obesity are being stripped of their moral valence. Obesity is no longer, in any sense, a moral problem—Begone sloth! Begone gluttony!—and instead simply a technical problem requiring a technical intervention, like athlete’s foot or dandruff.

This is base materialism at its worst, of a kind the left has made its own since the French Revolution, with appalling consequences. The problems of health are now like the problems of society: material problems with material solutions. There is no room for moral reform or any other kind of reform for that matter. Just the application of physical means until the problem goes away. Or doesn’t.

Why do we simply assume that users would develop the willpower to go and get a job and hold it down, when they didn’t exercise any willpower in losing the weight that is preventing them from going and getting a job in the first place? I don’t doubt that the average fat person’s self-esteem would be given a serious boost by losing weight, however they do it, but it simply doesn’t follow that a technical weight-loss intervention will have any meaningful effect on behaviour.

The irony of this is lost on the proposers of this new policy.

Of course, manufacturers of weight-loss drugs encourage this way of thinking. They want consumers to believe weight-loss drugs are the only way to lose weight reliably. Their advertising says precisely that. It’s not your fault. Try as you might—whatever diet or exercise regime you choose, from keto and Crossfit to intermittent fasting and Nordic walking—the probability is that you won’t lose weight. We have the studies that show this. We know that genetic and environmental factors are more important than plain old willpower and self-abnegation, cancel them out even.

You can try, but chances are you’ll fail. So why try at all?