Winston Churchill once famously said of Stanley Baldwin’s government: “So they go on, in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.” Would this be a fair comment on the present administration?

Reading last week’s Leader, one is inclined to think so. The general tenor of this government may be summed up in three words - doubt, dither and delay. Mountains are promised, molehills arrive. Stimulate the economy with big investment in our overloaded transport network? Great idea but, er, not just yet. A massacre of quangos? Well yes, but not that many.

The basic weakness, of course, is that the government lacks a genuine, free market-based ideological framework within which policy can be shaped. Instead it bends towards what may be described as neo-populism - a tendency, in common with its predecessor, to respond to pressure from vociferous lobby groups purporting to represent ‘middle England’.

” Bovine meddling is not exactly what the industry needs right now”

The same applies to its misguided hankering after minimum pricing of alcohol. This bovine meddling is not exactly what the food and drink industry needs right now.

Another key weakness is the apparent absence of rigorous policy analysis and evaluation, which should underpin any government intervention. So we now have ministerial backing for traffic-light labelling in the belief that it will promote healthier diets.

Leaving aside the conflicting and proliferating evidence about what foods are ‘good’ and ‘bad’, the reality is that despite two decades of promoting healthier options by food manufacturers, retailers, dieticians and the like, our national obesity data has moved in the opposite direction.

Instead of focusing exclusively on these supply side variables, ministers would be better employed looking at what influences consumer demand for healthier options. They might learn something about the reality of feeding a family on a very tight budget.

But, as PJ O’Rourke observed: “Politicians are interested in people in the same way that dogs are interested in fleas.”