During the unfolding calamities of the last week in British politics, one image has produced a collective – in fact, a global – laugh, amidst the UK’s economic and governmental gloom. That image is one of a lettuce, elevated to stardom through the Daily Star’s YouTube livestream and a series of front page headlines. The lettuce, on the very small off-chance that you haven’t seen it, was filmed alongside a portrait of the embattled PM Liz Truss, with the strapline ‘Will Liz Truss outlast this lettuce?’. Over time, the lettuce acquired stick-on eyes and mouth, and a blonde wig. When Truss eventually resigned, the wilting vegetable was crowned and pronounced victorious:
In fact, the idea that sparked this campaign had its origins in another publication. In an editorial which appeared on 11th October, the Economist noted that if you subtracted the period of mourning for the late Queen Elizabeth from Liz Truss’s time as Prime Minister up until then, ‘she had seven days in control. That is roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce’. As the political situation deteriorated, the Daily Star ran with the image in an engaging spectacle to fill the final days of her premiership. Over on Twitter, as Truss resigned, @Pandamoanimum captured the national mood by superimposing a lettuce at the Downing Street lectern:
It set me thinking about how Prime Ministers (and want-to-be PMs) have struggled with food-related incidents and images in the past. As far as I can see, Truss has a special place in history for being both personified as a foodstuff, and eventually having a vegetable pronounced as a worthy successor. Previous Prime ministers have tended to suffer from being caught eating something in a way open to mockery. Truss’s political difficulties may have been all-consuming, but her lettuce problem was a symbolic one, rather than one of active ingestion.
So, what were the foodie incidents of Truss’s predecessors? Food has cultural resonance and can be used as a way of making politicians appear relatable, or to forge relationships with voters – think of all those campaign dinners and snack stops during elections. It was one of these that tripped up Theresa May in 2017 in Cornwall:
Her awkward stance while clutching a cone of chips encapsulated a growing opinion that she was a stiff performer and out-of-touch with ordinary people – hardly ideal when seeking election. She went on to lose her majority in the 2017 General Election.
David Cameron always endeavoured to balance his poshness with bloke-y relatability, a strategy memorably undermined by his being snapped eating a hot dog with cutlery during the 2015 election campaign:
One explanation for his unconventional eating strategy is the photograph that everyone thinks of when the subject of politicians eating comes up: Ed Miliband and the bacon sandwich. This was a recent memory at the time of Cameron’s hot dog. The Miliband snapshot captured a perceived awkwardness in the then Labour leader’s demeanour, and was seized upon by the press. The photo even has its own Wikipedia page, such was its apparent impact. During the 2015 General Election campign, it was re-published by the Sun newspaper, alongside commentary encouraging readers to reject Miliband’s Prime Ministerial ambitions:
David Cameron had his own lettuce-related incident in the run-up to his 2015 election victory. In an interview the BBC’s James Landale, Cameron chatted in his kitchen while making salad, and revealed then he would not stand for a third term if re-elected. Landale wrote that the comments would ‘electrify’ the election campaign and potentially unleash a lengthy Tory leadership challenge. As I have written previously, kitchens can prove to be shaky ground for politicians, as they are signifiers of taste, and their informality can make for unguarded moments in conversation, like David Cameron’s revelation.
The eagle-eyed may have noticed that my journey back through recent politicians eating has one notable absentee so far: Liz Truss’s predecessor, Boris Johnson. He’s a man whose appetites have proven emblematic and problematic in equal measure. Photographs of Boris Johnson and food have a particular resonance because of the Partygate scandal which derailed his premiership. The scandal centred on photographic evidence of wining and dining at Downing Street, while the population endured the privations of Covid lockdowns:
As the number of alleged breaches of regulations discovered continued to grow, and Boris Johnson sought to deflect from them, public anger mounted. In typical British fashion, satire also flourished, just as the Daily Star lettuce saga has accompanied the current political and economic crisis. ‘Ambushed by cake’, a phrase coined by a Johnson supporting MP, to explain how the then PM had marked his birthday, became the expression which summed up an atmosphere of entitlement and sleaze. It also dovetailed with Boris Johnson’s ‘have-your-cake-and-eat-it’ approach to political problems, as shown in this more recent cartoon by Nicola Jennings, on the paucity of the Johnson government’s food strategy:
In fact, Boris Johnson’s cake-heavy diet had already `caught journalists’ attention when he was Mayor of London. When he became Prime Minster, journalist at Vice magazine, Nana Baah, recorded living for a week on the food that Johnson said filled his shopping basket in an Observer feature from 2008. This was a menu replete with Diet Coke, bangers and mash and a near absence of vegetables (though lettuce does in fact have a walk-on part). Among his predilections, he mentioned enjoying birthday cake for breakfast as it was frequently left over in his fridge. As Baah commented, ‘An immediate question arises: why, are how, are there so many birthdays in the Johnson household’ – ambushed by cake indeed…
Perhaps the lesson for politicians is that food has unparalleled power to reveal character and social standing, and to suggest to the electorate who its leaders really are. Will the next incumbent, whoever they may be, fare any better? Probably best not mention McDonald’s breakfast wraps to Rishi Sunak… As the wits of Twitter have had it in the last few days, lettuce pray.
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