It’s fortunate for Rishi Sunak that the government can’t be held to account for deliberately misleading MPs – and the public – about its obesity strategy.

If there were sanctions for that, the entire Tory leadership and its public health team would be sitting things out on the sidelines following an embarrassing series of delays and u-turns.

The latest of these saw Sunak confirm over the weekend that the proposed ban on bogofs and other multibuy promotions, scheduled to come into force in October, would be delayed again until at least October 2025, despite Downing Street sources as recently as last week insisting it was all systems go.

Sources close to this will confidently tell you that is Tory leadership shorthand for “it ain’t gonna happen”, at least while they are in power, so the multibuy ban effectively joins the likes of the junk food watershed on the scrapheap.

There would certainly be no need for video evidence on this one, such is the blatant backtracking in the face of industry and backbench lobbying.

Government’s weight loss drugs focus

Meanwhile health and social care secretary Steve Barclay stressed the government’s new focus on weight loss drugs and exercise to tackle obesity.

On the surface, the outcome of the unravelling of government’s obesity plans is also a major victory for the food and drink industry, which has long maintained that the intervention on HFSS promotions flouts choice (as Sunak now too claims) and lacks evidence that it would actually work.

With the government’s own impact assessment predicting a ban on multibuy deals would reduce calorie consumption by the equivalent of one grape a day, a fact seized upon by anti-nanny state campaigners as well as the food industry, there are major questions over whether a ban of bogofs would have made a major dent in obesity.

But the impact of having a government whose policies on public health are consistent in only one respect – that they will be delayed, delayed again and then axed altogether – is not healthy for industry either.

Increasingly, campaign groups are looking at more direct action targeted at companies themselves, rather than bothering to go through the usual political channels.

How will Labour drive action on obesity?

The rise of groups such as Share Action is clear proof that protest about the health of food will not simply go away.

Meanwhile, all eyes are now on Labour to see whether it will take a similarly pragmatic approach, with Keir Starmer seeking to make his party more business-friendly ahead of polling day.

Will Starmer breathe new life into Johnson’s old policies, or will he find them too reminiscent of the sort of old school interventionist policy he is keen to disown?

Last year shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said he was “not tin-eared enough” to impose anti-obesity rules when food costs were rising.

However Streeting – himself tipped as a future Labour leader – has more recently said Labour would not hesitate to push ahead with the junk food ad ban. He has also praised the effectiveness of the soft drinks sugar levy, which campaign groups would like to see extended to other products.

For the industry as well as campaign groups, the war to win hearts and minds now needs to rely not on what the lame duck Sunak government will do, but on what Labour will be prepared to do when it takes up the baton of government.

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