Politics and food don’t mix. Think Edwina Currie and eggs, George Osborne and Cornish pasties, David Cameron and Waitrose, and John Gummer, who, at the height of the BSE crisis, infamously tried to feed a beefburger to his four-year-old daughter, Cordelia.
Wisely, she refused. Some might say Ed Miliband should have done the same yesterday morning, when he was handed a bacon sandwich by some budding Francis Urquhart in order to make him look like a politician’s impossible dream – a Man Of The People.
An amused Independent reports the seemingly simple stunt quickly went awry after it became apparent the sandwich was loaded with a hangover-busting combination of grease and ketchup. To his embarrassment, Miliband was forced to give up eating the offending sandwich after a few bites because he couldn’t eat it “elegantly”, making him the first ever man of the people not to finish a bacon sandwich and fleetingly consider frying up another one.
The Independent failed to note whether the bacon was back or streaky. It also neglected to investigate whether the bread was toasted and if butter was involved. That is regrettable, but arguably there are bigger issues to consider. Not least whether if Ed Miliband can’t cope with the challenge of a drippy bacon sarnie, is he the wisest choice to run the country?
That sloppy sandwich wasn’t the only banana skin for Miliband this week (and, as well all know, the Milibands do have a history with bananas). Making an appearance on ITV’s excellent new breakfast show, Good Morning Britain, Ed also failed political test number one – knowing how much the average punter spends on stuff. Typically it used to be the price of a pint of milk, but yesterday that tigress of political interviewing, Susannah Reid, raised the stakes and demanded to know the price of a full weekly shop.
Put on the rack, Ed reached into the ether and came back with a figure of “£70-£80 a week, probably more”. A good guess for a man who clearly didn’t have a clue, but it wasn’t enough for Reid, who told him it was “above £100”, accused him of being a typical politician, and suggested he was “talking about something but out of touch with the reality”.
Poor Ed quickly pulled an ‘appalled by the very idea’ face, but the only reality here was that his spin doctor was clearly too busy planning whether he should be using red or brown sauce on that all-important bacon sandwich to brief him with a simple stock answer to bat away one of the oldest trick questions in the book. Someone subscribe him to The Grocer, quick. Then we can get Ed up to speed on every food and drink issue under the sun.
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