Delistings, pricing disputes, tumbling prices… the claws are out in grocery these days. And, as we reveal tomorrow in our annual Britain’s Biggest Brands report, more than half of the UK’s top 100 grocery brands have had a proper mauling in the past year, suffering significant slides in sales.
It’s even worse in Westminster right now, what with all the pre-election posturing. Bizarrely, a lot of it’s been over kitchens. Milliband’s efforts to convince us all he’s like us by inviting the BBC into his kitchen for a cuppa backfired last week when it emerged he has two kitchens to choose from.
Cameron and chums rejoiced, getting stuck in to poor old ‘two kitchens’ at PMQs. Next came the toe-curling video put out by The Sun this week featuring Cameron showing just how ‘normal’ he is by cooking up lunch in the family kitchen (actually… one of them; turns out the he has two too).
But do the contents of the Camerons’ kitchen give us any clues of how ‘normal’ our Eton-educated, former Bullingdon Club member PM really is?
Just six of this year’s top 100 grocery brands – Lurpak; Heinz Tomato Ketchup; John West; PG Tips; Hellmans; Twinings – can been seen on the shelves of the Cameron kitchen in The Sun’s film, suggesting, as for many of us, own-label takes up a big part of shopping basket.
Indeed, there’s no shortage of Waitrose Essentials products on show. There’s also plenty of products that suggest the Camerons prescribe to some of the current food trends, with a vegetable spiralizer, virgin coconut oil and manuka honey all on show.
I use the term ‘on show’ because there can be no doubt that everything visible in the family kitchen will have been vetted by the Tory press team prior to the filming to ensure there was nothing that could come back to bite them on the work top.
So is Cameron normal? Kind of. The lack of brands, the Waitrose own label and the £12 bottle of wine from Ocado show that his spin doctors wanted to present him as normal in a kind of upper middle class kind of way.
How normal are you? Find out with Britain’s Biggest Brands 2015 tomorrow.
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