Sometimes a small detail in a news story tells you more than a months-long investigation splashed across the front page. ‘Starmer appears to realise that he needs to do more to connect with his party and has begun a new charm offensive,’ the Sunday Times reported. Some MPs have been invited for breakfast and ‘No. 10 has apparently purchased a new toaster to cater for the demand.’
There we have it, ladies and gentlemen. Keir Starmer’s secret weapon in his war against British decline: a few slices of Hovis and an awkward offer of jam. ‘Aerrr, are you planning to, um, support our Borders Bill? Oh, so sorry, we’ve got some Utterly Butterly somewhere. Morgan, would you mind looking in the kitchen?’
It seems pretty cruel to invite MPs for breakfast and then present them with toast. If you go for breakfast in a propah caff, they tend to give you the toast first on a little plate before your full English arrives. Toast is basically a starter. You’d have thought No. 10 could stretch to a bit of bacon or some sausages – something to perk up Starmer’s rebellious backbenchers. Yes, I know he’s a vegetarian, but he shouldn’t inflict that miserable predilection on his colleagues.
The thing about these news gobbets – details like the toaster – is that they’re often briefed out by some No. 10 Oxbridge wonk who has been planning his political ascent for decades (he is 23). They are designed to give political reporters something to chew on, something that will sate their hunger for ‘colour’. Perhaps the toaster is one of these planted gobbets – I have no way of knowing, but I want to believe that it is – and, if so, the No. 10 toaster takes on a sort of tragic air. The story is like a little parable: the mean, unimaginative man who invites his friends for a meal, presents them with nothing but a hunk of bread then brags about it.
More than that, though, the No. 10 toaster speaks to a miserablist streak in politics. It’s the same instinct that drives tabloids to complain that the Prime Minister isn’t flying cattle class, or insists we pay our MPs less than a headteacher at a failing comp. It’s a dowdy, priggish urge – one that I think explains the very decline that Starmer impotently hopes to reverse. We are suffering from the kind of puritanism H.L. Mencken first identified, ‘the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.’ Of course, beyond the confines of Westminster, these politicians are taking freebies, corporate tickets to football matches and louche suits paid for by minted donors. That kind of thing is grubby, but only because it’s so mundane. A Paul Smith jacket and a glass of Chapel Down is enough to corrupt our politicians? Pathetic.
A straightforward breakfast is simply too fraught for centrist sensibilities
Anyway, breakfast. I imagine a conversation was had somewhere deep in the bowels of Downing Street, perhaps involving a whiteboard and some sticky notes. ‘Gail’s croissants? Far too elitist. Same problem with kedgeree, plus it’s got a complicated colonial history. Black pudding? Too regional, might upset our urban voter base. The chief medical nursing director of the public health secretariat tells us that bacon is carcinogenic, so that’s a no-go. In fact, I’m worried anything approaching a fry-up would offend the religious sensibilities of quite a few of our MPs…’ They put away the highlighters and decide that a straightforward breakfast is simply too fraught for centrist sensibilities. So it’s toast.
If you speak to civil servants, one of their many complaints is that the government provides no tea or coffee, nor any milk. Such things are believed to be frivolous in the eyes of taxpayers. I take a different view. I want my political elites caffeinated to the nines, physically shaking with coffee-induced anxiety as they set about their work doing God knows what. Instead they have to buy these office essentials themselves. Perhaps that’s the real reason No. 10 was unwilling to invest in a griddle pan and some sausages. They’re terrified the hoi polloi might riot. Well, frankly, nothing makes me want to riot more than that sad toaster.
I could end this piece by making a joke about the smell of toast and Starmer having a stroke, or with some deftly constructed wordplay about the PM not only liking toast but being toast. Why bother? Starmer’s not putting in the effort, so why should I?
Comments