IT SEEMS THAT I am “an a***hole, a tosser, an idiot” — otherwise known as a parent, in loveable Jamie Oliver’s description of those who give their children “fizzy drinks” or “bags of crisps”. He might think I am one, but I am certain that Oliver is talking out of his.

After Oliver’s television series denouncing school dinners won widespread acclaim and changed government policy, a lot of children stopped eating them. Now with a follow-up on Channel 4 next Monday, Oliver has turned to roasting “the biggest evil” — packed lunches. He claims that while some parents give four-year olds a cold, half-eaten McDonald’s and can of Red Bull, even the best packed lunch is “shit” and should be banned.

Oliver says that he is “bored” with “being PC about parents”, and has to “tell it like it is”. A worthy sentiment. Except that his arguments are packed with more half-digested junk than any lunchbox. As Professor Stanley Feldman pointed out in a letter to The Times this week, children need a varied diet, but it does not matter if the protein comes from burgers or best steak. If the road to an early grave were paved with crisps and fizzy drinks, my generation would hardly have survived to have kids and enjoy Oliver’s sermons.

This moral crusade seems aimed less against packed lunches than “junk” parents — particularly those whom Oliver branded “what we have learnt to call ‘white trash’ ”. St Jamie of Our School Dinner Ladies is now worried that his criticism of parents will make him a martyr.

But in truth, Oliver has only expletive-ly spelt out the prejudices towards parents that inform much government policy. Official agencies may talk soothingly of giving parents “support” to make “informed choices” (ie, choose what they inform us is best), but the message is much the same. We are essentially seen as idiots and a***holes who could not find our behinds with two hands, far less bring up children, without guidance from the experts.

I confess to the heinous crime of giving our kids a diet of things they will actually eat. That means everything from the Sunday roast to a takeaway from the local tandoori, washed down with fizzy drinks. It used to include school dinners. But this term, our two young daughters rejected the fare at their local school in favour of packed lunches (including crisps) — a move that coincided with the introduction of compulsory “healthy menus”, with less fried food and no salt available.

The Government has yet to respond to Oliver’s demands for a ban by sending in the packed-lunch police, but there are reports of some schools searching lunchboxes and confiscating “contraband” junk food. I always thought that what mattered at school was the knowledge they fed children in the classroom, in the bits between meals. But then I am only an idiot parent.

• BACK IN February 1995, as editor of Living Marxism magazine, I upset many on the Left with this front page about their great white hope, “Tony Blearghh! Why Labour would be EVEN WORSE than the Tories”. A similarly subtle headline today might read, “The Brown Stuff? Ugghh! Why he will be EVEN WORSE than Blair”.

  Only the self-deluded on the Left can still be Waiting for Gordo. Gordon Brown shares Tony Blair’s worst attributes (and policies) but none of his redeeming qualities — like leadership. Witness his display of moral cowardice in backing, yet denying, the Lilliputians’ plot against Mr Blair. Perhaps he is fortunate that Britain is now more tolerant towards those who go missing from the front line.

  New Labour under Mr Brown will be personality politics without the person, managerial politics without the man. The best we can expect is that he will play John Major to Mr Blair’s Mrs Thatcher — sort of Vote Brown, get grey.

• THE Walthamstow Guardian reports that the bizarre teaching pack on 9/11 that I wrote about recently (the one that, among other hair-raising ideas, tells children to put themselves in a terrorist’s shoes and think of local targets), has now been withdrawn from our schools, and asks how it could have got through in the first place. Perhaps the education authorities were just too busy protecting our children from the evils of burgers and chips.

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