“Ed Miliband fails to look normal while eating bacon sandwich ahead of campaign tour,” barked the Independent newspaper at the time. His formidable Tory campaign opponents — keen to cast Miliband as an out-of-touch nerd — exploited the gift, and his campaign never recovered.
Theresa May chips away her authority
Determined to learn absolutely nothing from Miliband’s bacon sandwich furore, galaxy brain Conservative aides sent then-Prime Minister Theresa May out on the 2017 election campaign trail to prove that she wasn’t some stilted robot incapable of doing normal human things.
Cue a walkabout on the British seafront holding a cone of chips in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. Yet with both hands full, May found it practically impossible to get stuck into either. She “looked for all the world like she had never eaten chips before – or at least not without a knife and fork,” the Guardian wrote. Mission accomplished! May sensationally lost her majority in the election that followed — but not before Brits had their fun on social media.
The Raab special
Conservative former Cabinet minister Dominic Raab will perhaps forever be associated with eating the same lunch ad infinitum, after a scandal involving his diary secretary prompted her to reveal his eating habits to an undercover reporter.
The woman in question told the Mirror that Raab militantly eats the same lunch every day from Pret a Manger: a chicken caesar and bacon baguette, a super-fruit pot and a “vitamin volcano” smoothie.
Much to Raab’s annoyance, the meal was swiftly dubbed the “Dom Raab Special” by Westminster wags — although Pret later revealed that Raab was perhaps on to something, picking the chain’s most popular sandwich.
