If you Google ‘Ed Miliband eating’ you’ll be presented with countless images of the politician awkwardly eating a variety of different foods. The man can’t unfold a napkin without being snapped. I have been struck over the past couple of weeks, since the election campaign kicked off, by the British media’s unsettling fascination with the ways in which its leaders eat food. Eating in front of other people makes one vulnerable at the best of times, without the knowledge that your face full of bacon sandwich will be plastered across every paper the following day. Apparently how we eat determines our suitability for leadership.
Only yesterday, on day two of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, the Guardian carried the headline ‘Hilary’s Flawless Chipotle Choice’. The article included graphic, up-close images of the Democrat chowing down on a Mexican tortilla. She managed the affair with alot more grace that I could summon. I don’t like anyone regarding me when I eat because I lack the elegance to make it a pleasant experience for the person watching me. However, if you are a politician, you must be ready to manoeuvre the trickiest of foods into one’s mouth, while appearing interested and concerned about the bacon sandwich vendor you have been thrust upon, who probably won’t even bother voting for you anyway. If I was a politician I wouldn’t eat in public. I would insist, like a Roman emperor, that my meals were brought to me so that I could consume them with gluttonous abandon within the dark confines of my campaign bus (or campaign chariot if I was a Roman emperor, I guess).
The way a politician eats has become competitive. Nick Clegg appeared on KBC Radio and was asked to do the ‘Ed Miliband Test’. He had to eat a bacon sandwich as the presenter decided whether or not he was better at it than his rival. Forget taxes, it’s party leaders’ ability to eat that counts.
David Cameron recently took on a hot dog, a brave choice for a politician eating in public. How he managed to get away with it while avoiding distasteful headlines about felatio is beyond me.
He was only eating the hotdog to gain some ‘man of the people’ kudos. Inside he was seething, no doubt. “Enough of this damn filth. How about some Eton Mess instead? Bully! Bully!”
Food takes on enormous symbolism when a politician eats it, not just in the physical way. Peter Mandelson was once ridiculed for mistaking mushy peas for guacamole in a tour of a chipper. How out of touch he must be with the common diet of the common man!
George Osborne, in a bid to cast himself as just an ordinary bloke, tweeted a picture of the burger he was about to tuck into in the treasury. The hawkers were ready to lampoon him as it was a gourmet burger with a pricetag of over £6.50. The man must have no idea of the struggles the rest of us burger munching plebeians endure!
If I were a politician would I be coerced by my PR managers into eating bacon sandwiches every time I decided to eat out? No more olives, saucisson or tapenade for me? Because, apparently if you don’t eat anything like a burger, bacon sandwich or chipotle, then you are ‘out of touch’. Oh dear, I’ll leave it to others thank you.
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