Liberal Democrat activists were reportedly told to ‘get out the Gail’s vote’, targeting people who visit the over-priced artisanal cafés. There are 131 Gail’s in the UK and around half are in Lib Dem marginals. If you’ve never come across one, think spinach, feta and filo pastry for £6, sold by a stressed Spanish girl in Twickenham.
As I squirted more special sauce on to my plate, I witnessed the true meaning of Wimpy (est. 1954)
I mentioned the Lib Dems’ Gail’s strategy to a Reform adviser. He laughed. ‘Oh, we tended to go after places with a Wimpy Bar at the election.’ I can confirm that Nigel Farage’s seat of Clacton-on-Sea has a Wimpy on the same road as his campaign HQ and there is another in Thurrock. Richard Tice is Wimpy-less after the one in Skegness shut down.
I was only dimly aware of Wimpy. My dad would talk of the chain with childlike fondness, although we never once went in. It struck me as a hangover from the days when Britain bothered to compete, a sort of Soviet-esque two fingers to American cultural hegemony. You could buy yourself a British burger, British chips with a portion of proper British ketchup and stick it to the foreign muck from McDonald’s and Burger King. So off I went to my nearest Wimpy for a plate of Faragism. There was indeed something vaguely Soviet about the Wimpy on Streatham High Road. The chairs were bolted to the floor and upholstered in faded floral plastic. Your food – in my case a Wimpy cheeseburger and chips – is brought to the table on a plate, along with cutlery and a paper napkin.
Wait, hang on… isn’t this exactly the kind of weird anthropological way of viewing normal life that irritates Reform supporters? Aren’t I sounding like a Gail’s-munching Lib Dem, the kind of person who unthinkingly splurges £9 on a hummus bagel? Yes, but isn’t that the point? Wimpy is left-behind Britain, a place unvisited by graduates working in media. People like me are far more likely to eat at Five Guys, the fast-food mega-corp that launched here a decade ago and claims to serve old-school American burgers.
My Wimpy cheeseburger was, I have to say, a little mediocre. But as I squirted more special sauce on to my plate, I witnessed the true meaning of Wimpy (est. 1954). People came in just to chat: a pensioner in a tatty charity-shop jacket joined a builder in hi-viz, nursing tea in a paper cup. Above the counter was a huge ‘BT sport watch live here’ banner. People were watching Euros highlights, laughing at England’s poor performance. The owner wiped down the table opposite mine, playing peek-a-boo with a child in a highchair. At the till, he told me he’d been there since the 1970s.
You wouldn’t get that at Five Guys, which has 166 UK restaurants to Wimpy’s wimpy 64. The former trades on its folksy origins – the five guys are a Virginian dad and his four sons who set up the chain – yet half of all new employees leave within three months. Meanwhile, Five Guys is facing shortages as one of Britain’s largest unions threatens strike action. How do you think its customers voted? That’s right, over 90 per cent of Five Guys are in a Labour constituency.
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