YESTERDAY the government announced the introduction of a new series of measures aimed at reducing the amount of crap food that people have access to.

This is primarily taking the form of reducing and removing the availability of “buy one, get one free” offers on particularly unhealthy meals, but it also includes a ban on junk-food advertising before 9pm, a variety of consultations and national awareness campaigns and, possibly, the banning of online advertising of junk food altogether.

A reduction in obesity levels would obviously be a good thing, but against the backdrop of the coronavirus crisis it is particularly important.

A multitude of studies and research since the start of the pandemic suggest that the chunky among us, myself included, are at a significantly higher risk of contracting the virus and once contracted, we’re also more likely to die or suffer serious and long-lasting side effects.

This means that we are also going to be more responsible per head of population for the potential spreading of the virus.

In this scenario, you’d be forgiven for thinking that reducing the amount of obesity in our — and every — country would be a good thing. These are simply rational policies. Labour or Tory, surely we can all agree it would be good if people were healthier?

Of course not. The blue-haired commentariat have arrived right on time to tell us that this is not actually a fairly commonsense response to a problem in society — that it is, in fact, “fat-phobic body shaming” and, if you agree with it, you’re admitting that you think anyone that’s ever eaten a packet of sausage rolls to themselves should be shot at dawn.

The massed ranks of Twitter and Facebook hacks are already leaping to the defence of the nation’s rotund citizens and like most things radical liberalism does, they’re dead wrong.

Being significantly overweight in modern Britain just makes no sense — and I say this as someone who is significantly overweight.

Gyms are cheaper than they’ve ever been and people in lockdown have had basically nothing to do but exercise and for the past four months. We have the resources and the time to be healthy. So why are we not? In almost all cases the truth is: personal choice.

But the answer, according to the people who defend the right to be fat, is that it is not actually a problem — you can be “healthy at any size.” And if it is a problem, then it’s an inevitable result of being working class in a modern capitalist society — according to them fast food is cheap, exploited workers are poor; junk food is fast and the working class are in a rush. Simple, right?

But this victim-centric logic just doesn’t bear out — we need to give ourselves and our class more agency than that. Even a meagre takeaway will run to the best part of a fiver, probably more. A quick look at supermarket websites shows just how much healthy food that will buy.

While it is wrong to go too far the other way and expect everyone to know how to cook healthy, cheap meals from fresh ingredients, it is not wrong to ask the state to educate those that don’t and to incentivise them to do so.

The left can play a role too: community organisations and red gyms such as Solstar and 0161 Community have published information on how to eat well on a budget and how to exercise for free at home.

While there are some exceptions, we will never actually deal with this problem properly if we don’t accept that in the vast majority of cases, body size is down to choice. So any measures that help us make the right choices are welcome.

There is no reason — barring a few medical and psychological conditions — that can justify being seriously overweight. It is a choice, and it’s one that I’ve made. I have my reasons — working shifts etc — but reasons are not justifications.

That free hour at the end of the day is spent in front of the TV with a kebab instead of exercising. This is a choice I make — a socially irresponsible one at the best of times. During a pandemic like Covid-19, it’s a dangerous choice — and the defence of it is dangerous too.

The pressure put on the NHS by obesity, even outside of the pandemic, is monumental. But during a viral pandemic that impacts fat people far more than people of a healthy weight, having strangers on Twitter rally round to defend my right to a Holland’s pie  — other pies are apparently available, for some reason — is baffling.

These are the same people who glorified and elevated Catherine Oakeson to fame as a “plus-size advocate” and “plus-size icon,” right up until she died of a heart attack at 49.

We cannot give any ground to the people that glorify and excuse being fat. They endanger the health of individuals, the health of communities and the integrity of the NHS.

They are outrage tourists who will move on to the next vacuous cause as soon as the hype dies down, leaving a trail of confused, sweaty, wheezing people abandoned behind them.

Of course the Tories need to be held to account for everything else they are doing that impoverishes us and undermines our NHS — but it isn’t “either or” — we can agree that these measures are an alright start, whilst demanding far more. And we can ask a bit more of ourselves too: victimhood is not and never will be a working-class characteristic.

Danny Jennings is a trade unionist, community activist and member of the Manchester Young Communist League.