‘Not real food’? UK political leaders spar over sandwiches

The UK’s political leaders have traded barbs again, not over immigration, the economy or multiple crises overseas — but Britain’s much-loved lunchtime staple: the sandwich.

The row, of sorts, started on Thursday after the new Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch declared that she was “not a sandwich person” in an interview.

“Lunch is for wimps,” Badenoch told the Spectator magazine. “I have food brought in and I work and eat at the same time.”

“Sometimes I will get a steak,” she added. “I don’t think sandwiches are a real food, it’s what you have for breakfast.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is juggling issues from housing and taxation to the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU, expressed his surprise at Badenoch’s comments and came to the defence of sandwiches.

“It’s a great British institution, I believe it brings in £8 billion (€9.6 billion) to the UK economy,” said a spokesperson for Starmer. “I think the prime minister is quite happy with a sandwich lunch,” he said, adding that this could be a tuna or cheese offering.

Later on Thursday, Badenoch posted on X: “The PM has time to respond to my jokes about lunch … but no time for the farmers who produce our food.” Thousands of British farmers protested in Westminster last month over a controversial inheritance tax plan they say will destroy family farms.

Starmer has endured a testing first six months as prime minister, having faced criticism over accepting donations and gifts such as Taylor Swift and Arsenal FC tickets and unpopular tax increases announced in a recent budget.

His approval ratings are low — Ipsos last month recorded a net favourability rating of minus 29 while YouGov put him at minus 33 — yet are still higher than those of his PM predecessors Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss (both Conservatives) while they were in office.

Starmer’s support for sandwiches was shrewd, judging by the reactions on social media and debate on British television channels and radio stations.

Jim Winship, director of the British Sandwich & Food To Go Association, dismissed Badenoch’s disdain for sandwiches as “rubbish” during a BBC radio discussion.

“We eat 3.5 billion commercially made sandwiches every year. This is part of our heritage,” Winship said.

This is hardly the first time that sandwiches have been at the forefront of British politics.

In 2014, the then-Labour Party Ed Miliband was ridiculed after an ungainly attempt to eat a bacon sandwich was captured on camera. The following year, the Sun newspaper ran the photo of Miliband the day before the UK’s 2015 general election. Miliband lost.

Miliband, who is now the UK’s energy secretary, joked in an interview with Sky News on Thursday afternoon that he was “here for the sandwich content.”

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“I wish I could have a cross-party consensus here with Kemi Badenoch, but I can’t,” he said. “You know, I think I need to persuade her of the delights of a bacon sandwich.”