It is one of Michael Gove’s predecessors as editor of The Spectator, Iain Macleod, himself also a one-time Conservative cabinet minister, who is credited with popularising the phrase, “Nanny State”, way back in 1965. He used it to criticise measures such as the Labour government announcing a ban on cigarette advertising on commercial television.
“This new victory for the Nanny State represents the wrong approach,” he wrote. “It is certainly the duty of ministers to make sure that there is full knowledge of the risks thought to be involved in heavy cigarette-smoking… If this is done, the decision to smoke or not is for the individual, and it should be left to him [sic].”
Advisedly, he attributed a gender to the smoker; at that time, around 70 per cent of British men smoked cigarettes. Today, just 14.6 per cent of the UK’s male population smoke, so you could say that it was indeed a comprehensive victory for the nanny state, although not in the way Macleod meant it.
I refer back to this because........