Mid way through Iain Dale's speech at the Forest/TMA reception last night a thought occurred to me: "I should be recording this."
Belatedly therefore I hit the 'Voice Memos' app on my iPhone and caught the latter half. There was a fair bit of background noise, as I explained here, but give or take a few words this is an accurate transcript:
Take Jeremy Hunt's latest wheeze. How many here have been to a restaurant in the United States called The Cheesecake Factory? If you have you will know that they produce the most enormous portions of cheesecake you've ever had in your life. Now I believe, even as a diabetic, that I have the right to eat cheesecake.
[Audience cheers]
And if I want to eat an effing great portion of cheesecake then that is my decision. I know what I'm doing to my body. I shouldn't do it but I still do.
Now Jeremy Hunt wants to police the size of the portions that you have of desserts in restaurants. He wants to name and shame restaurants that don't conform to Department of Health guidelines on the size of portions. Now he also, as you know, supports the sugar tax. Now I don't understand how anybody could call themselves a Conservative if they support a sugar tax.
[Audience cheers again]
I just don't get it.
[More cheers]
Now I have a message for any Conservative volunteer who supports this kind of legislation, you need to look yourselves in the mirror. Are you actually members of the right political party?
If you are a Secretary of State who accepts advice from civil servants who you need to basically go into the nooks and crannies of everybody's private life or their diets, I don't believe those are Conservative principles.
Look at the smoking ban. Some people would say well that's worked. I don't like going into restaurants where there's smoke, but it's not my decision. Surely it should be up to the owner of the restaurant or the bar or the pub as to what you'll do? While cigarettes remain legal they should do it.
[Loud cheers]
And of course that's the real agenda here. All of the people who want to ban smoking want to ban cigarettes. They want to make them illegal but they can never actually say that on a public platform.
Politicians who are in favour of the smoking ban ... never have the courage to say that they want to make cigarettes illegal because they know what the electoral consequences of that would be.
I call these people freedom fascists. They don't understand the word freedom, they don't understand what the rule of law means, and they don't have the right to tell me what to do with my body.
[Louder cheers]
So I think Forest, [and] the TMA, do an absolutely fantastic job defending freedom. It's great to see so many people here tonight supporting them and I hope they continue to do so for a very long time.
Thank you very much.
[Prolonged cheers and applause]