Four stone in a year! No disrespect to earlier weight influencers Rishi Sunak, George Osborne, Boris Johnson and the late Nigel Lawson, but even if Robert Jenrick fails to win the Tory leadership contest there is no question that, with its quick and impressive results, his diet must be the best ever devised by an unpopular Conservative politician.
What does it involve? Simply obtain an Ozempic prescription, follow the instructions, and watch the unwanted pounds melt away. Last week, Jenrick said he had taken Ozempic, a version of the appetite suppressant, semaglutide, for around six weeks, subsequently keeping his weight down “in the normal way”, via diet and exercise. He told Politico: “I took Ozempic for a short period of time, didn’t particularly enjoy it, but it was helpful.”
While it is unclear what weight loss can deliver, in the end, for Jenrick’s leadership bid, his Ozempic revelation promptly achieved what months of Jenrick videos and Jenrick Telegraph compositions have not, transforming this forgettable 42-year-old into a passing object of not exclusively negative general interest.
To add to his weight loss, Jenrick has a new Caesar haircut, an eye-catching reinvention that, almost to the point of plagiarism, recalls George Osborne’s austerity-meets-GQ makeover when he hoped to go from object of loathing to potential party leader. True, leadership by the expensively refurbished Osborne continued to be unthinkable. What else, on the other hand, can ever explain his newspaper career and seemingly unassailable incumbency at the ailing British Museum?
As for Jenrick: before the Ozempic news he was probably best known, if at all, for either or both of two distasteful episodes. The first, when he was secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, involved his granting permission for a controversial £1bn property deal proposed by the entrepreneur and former porn publisher, Richard Desmond. Desmond had sat next to Jenrick at a function and shown him – as you do – a video about the housing development. The deal was approved by Jenrick, with a speed that made it all the more profitable. A fortnight later, Desmond donated £12,000 to the Tory party. Jenrick later had to overturn his own permission, admitting it was “unlawful due to apparent bias”.
His second moment in the sun came in 2023, after Jenrick, by now an immigration minister, ordered that murals of cartoon characters in a reception centre for child asylum seekers be painted over for being “too welcoming”. Even Nigel Farage described the incident as “mean”.
But now Jenrick has a third identifying feature: his reduced weight. If it weren’t for “Ozempic shaming”, a phenomenon that often accompanies apparently inessential treatment, it might well be advantageous. But as his fellow beneficiaries have found, generally healthy users of semaglutides are routinely criticised for (1) using scarce supplies needed by diabetics and dangerously obese people, and (2) lacking the willpower to lose weight by conventional means.
Unfortunately for any Tory leadership contender known to have used semaglutides for weight loss, these objections are likely to be compounded, for some members of that party, by still lingering associations between obesity and state dependency/chips/moral turpitude.
They might even agree with an inspirational David Cameron lecture, from 2008, about weight and personal responsibility, the need for clarity about “right and wrong behaviour”.
“We talk about people being ‘at risk of obesity’ instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise,” he said. “We as a society have been far too sensitive. In order to avoid injury to people’s feelings, in order to avoid appearing judgmental, we have failed to say what needs to be said.”
We can only accept that comments online reacting to pictures of a swimsuited Mr Cameron, taken after his latest redundancy (“lump of Tory lard”, “hanging gut”, “blubbery whale”), express only the principled form of insensitivity, from readers determined to help someone so patently unable to help himself.
Tory candidates, then, have only their colleagues to blame if the only truly acceptable diet for a potential leader is medically unassisted self-denial, as recommended to the lower orders. Sunak and Osborne duly mastered intermittent fasting. Even Boris Johnson, thriving on tailor-made, cost-price organic hampers from a caring supplier, briefly thought himself qualified to advise on individual calorie control: “don’t be a fatty in your 50s”. (In your 60s, to judge by a recent Johnson sighting, be his guest.)
All of which may explain why Jenrick emphasised that his use of Ozempic had been short-term, reluctant, more or less an adjunct to harder-won lifestyle changes. To the point that, considering the fairly marginal improvements in appearance, he might more usefully have devoted all his willpower – no assistive drugs being available – to working up a personality, a distinctive voice, a national idea beyond denouncing immigration. Although, considering the quality of most of his rivals, body mass index is arguably as good a way as any of picking a new leader.
With the notable exception of Kemi Badenoch, they might have been chosen to support the former No 10 political adviser Munira Mirza’s contention, in a recent essay, that a new generation of political leaders “struggle to find a way to communicate their views at any length or articulate a vision with depth”. And having worked for Boris Johnson, she should know.
Suppose successful slimming does, however, emerge as the perfect way to beguile Conservative right wingers and potential defectors to Reform, questions remain as to the ultimate value in national politics of achievements in waist measurement.
Before the election, the political expert Peter Mandelson suggested Keir Starmer ought to “shed a few pounds”. To go by appearances, Starmer did not, prior to his landslide victory, oblige. While this case study cannot, of course, substitute for a scientific rebuttal of the Ojenrick™ route to political recognition, it’s nice to think there might be more to it than BMI and a haircut.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
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