Like Layla Moran, I had weight loss surgery – but I wouldn’t admit it if I were in politics

When I tell people I have lost half my body weight, I receive uniform praise. Sometimes I see shock in their eyes, that the person in the photographs I am sharing with them is me. After all, I do look radically different. Even if I sometimes slip back into bad habits, I have – overall – fundamentally changed my life.

Yet when I tell people that I started my weight loss journey with bariatric surgery, the reaction can be somewhat different. There is a sense that I somehow cheated, that my achievement isn’t quite real or at least less worthy of note.

So I watched Layla Moran talking to Cathy Newman, on Channel 4 News, about her own surgery with particular interest, especially as the Liberal Democrat MP and I underwent the same procedure. It was a warm and personal interview and, on both policy matters and as a human being, I couldn’t fault what she was saying. But if I were in her position, I don’t think I would have said it.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m proud I had the surgery and I think Moran, too, did the right thing. But I’m not a politician. My every word isn’t pounced on for deeper meaning. When people judge me for taking what they think of as a “short cut” to a healthier life, it doesn’t speak to a wider truth about my leadership style or anything else.

Moran is running for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats. As such, she has campaigned on areas in which the Lib Dems are strong, such as parity between mental and physical health. And she was absolutely right to raise this as part of her party’s strategy for tackling obesity. Trying to stop people getting themselves to the point that clearly she and I both found ourselves is key. That isn’t done through shaming, but understanding; through helping people do the work in their heads as much as they are doing the work on their bodies.

When you are running for a high profile role in politics, the first thing you get told – by your staff and by the press – are all the reasons people might not like you. Like it or not, part of your job is to try to counter or neutralise these tricky elements of your personal history. For Moran, there is still a sense that surrounds her that she isn’t much of a leader. Some of those supporting her opponent Ed Davey worry that she’s naive, too nice to play hard ball when it’s needed of her. That she would be unable to negotiate well in any coalition situation and that, under her leadership, her party could be taken for a ride. Others see her as muddled and inconsistent – too willing to blurt out a line that she can’t then back up in policy terms.

This is where her honesty about her own weight loss could hurt her. We are all very good at saying the right things about such a revelation – how brave Moran is in telling us her painful truth! – but the assumptions I see crystallising when people hear about my operation will be writ far larger for her now: she’s “lazy” and took a “short cut”; she “cheated” her way to better health. And that, in talking about public health measures to tackle obesity, she’s asking others to undertake the huge lifestyle changes she was unwilling or unable to pursue herself. That in publicly revealing this “weakness” at all, she is being politically naive. It’s a perfect storm.

When Charles Kennedy was open about his alcohol addiction as leader of the same party, the initial reaction was sympathetic – but he was very soon defenestrated nonetheless. People at the time would tell you it wasn’t about what they thought personally, but what they thought the public would be thinking. Political actors are quite good at outsourcing their prejudices.

Moran’s bariatric surgery won’t prove as damaging to her prospects as Kennedy’s alcoholism proved to be to him. But for those looking for an excuse not to back her, this raises an additional question mark. They will think about their own reaction of “that’s the easy way out” and ascribe it wider meaning. That’s not only a shame for Moran, but for all of those who are hoping we just imagine that look in people’s eyes.