School dinners head-up week of curious fare
This week’s pre-election campaign served up a curious mixture of political debate with a menu that included Turkey Twizzlers, Travellers, religion and Howard Flight.
First up were school dinners, as celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s campaign to get Turkey Twizzlers off school menus gathered pace. On Sunday, Tony Blair pledged funding for a new School Food Trust that would draw on the “remarkable” work of Jamie’s School Dinners (full story).
Education Secretary Ruth Kelly reiterated the pledge on Monday as she launched the party’s mini-manifesto for children and of course denied that the Government was just responding to Mr Oliver’s high profile campaign (full story).
Meanwhile, the Conservatives served up spicier fare by putting forward a five-point plan on illegal Traveller sites, claiming that they were “openly abusing” the UK’s planning rules. But Mr Howard’s addition to the menu was called racist in some quarters – a charge he denied, saying the issue “has nothing to do with race” (full story).
The Liberal Democrats, keen to get their ideas back on the menu, launched several full-page newspaper adverts and a fleet of touring poster vans. Costing £100,000, Tuesday was the most expensive day in the party’s campaigning history (full story).
Tuesday also saw the reappearance of religion as an issue, although only to the extent that Tony Blair said that it should be a private matter. “I don’t want to end up with an American-style type of politics with us all going out there and beating our chests about our faith,” he said (full story).
Belief of a different kind was being digested on Thursday as Michael Howard said it was time for a government that “believes in Britain” (full story).
But by Thursday evening, belief turned to disbelief in some Tory quarters as their campaign was hit by the publication of secretly recorded comments by deputy chairman Howard Flight, who appeared to suggest that the party was hiding the true scale of planned spending cuts to win the election.
The Arundel and South Downs MP resigned as deputy-chairman and was barred by Mr Howard from standing as a Conservative candidate at the next election in a row that would rumble into next week (full story).
The icing on the cake, however, was mounting speculation that the Prime Minister would call a general election when MPs returned from their Easter break (full story); while two polls by ICM (full story), and YouGov (full story) highlighted the fickle nature of the public’s political appetite.
