By Judith Woods
If you happen to walk down your local high street today, pause a Proustian moment by the open doorway of Greggs and linger a while. That’s not to imply you’ve ever been inside – of course not!
Well, maybe just the once, and actually that sausage and bean melt was absolutely delicio… but you were on holiday and the kids were hungry, and what happened in Scarborough, stays in Scarborough, so just stick to the line that you don’t remember. Now close your eyes as the seductive aroma of flaky puff pastry and greasy cheese-and-onion filling caresses your nostrils and saturates your soft palate. Hmmm. Remember the mouth-watering sensation and mark it well, for you are breathing in the heady scent of George Osborne’s fate.
The Chancellor may have snatched away benefits from mewling newborns, clobbered grannies and fawned over the super-rich, but his political reputation has been forever, ignominously heat-sealed inside a Greggs savoury.
When his economic strategy has been long-forgotten, the grey-power brigade have emigrated to Liechtenstein, and the short-lived applause for his tax transparency has died down, the one thing that Britain will remember him for is being Too Posh for a Pasty.
Peevish MPs routinely complain about the trivialisation of politics, but to do so misses the point: the devil is in the detail. Public and press alight on the minutiae not because it’s frivolous, but because a symbol can say so much more about a statesman’s mettle than a raft of impenetrable, cyclically adjusted targets. That pasty’s not just fast food, it’s a fast track into the cholesterol-laden heart of Britain’s body politic.
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