Recipes for disaster: David Cameron’s almond milk porridge
3 min read
This is a story from early 2014, just before the start of what I think of as the Mad Decade of British politics. It is also one in which I played, to my intense distress, a major part.
If you try really hard, you may be able to throw your mind back to January of that year. David Cameron had completed three years at the head of a coalition government and seemed, on the whole, to be making a pretty good fist of things. He had, it was true, promised a referendum on leaving the EU, but everyone knew this would allow him to settle the issue once and for all, just as the forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence would kill that question.
That January, the prime minister addressed a dinner of political journalists, and I had a prime spot across the table from him. Over the meal, the conversation turned to dieting.
At the time, the 5:2 diet was all the rage, and its leading political disciple was the chancellor, George Osborne. I mentioned that I had tried it briefly. The prime minister replied he wasn’t doing 5:2, but he had started using almond milk to make porridge. The conversation moved on.
A prime minister should surely expect anything said at a Christmas party will find its way to print
I tried almond milk porridge at the time, and again this week. It looks like ordinary porridge, but turns out to be nuttier than you expect. Which was pretty much Cameron’s experience of Tory MPs.
Two months later we were together again on a plane to Jerusalem, although he was at the front, and I was at the back. A colleague sidled up to me. “Dave eats meat, doesn’t he?” he asked. I confirmed that I’d recently watched the prime minister tuck into some. “Well, I just sneaked a look at the flight attendant’s meal list, and seat 1A is listed as vegan.” We peered forwards, and agreed that the top of the head in 1A belonged to Cameron.
“Oh well,” I said, “that’ll be because he’s on a non-dairy diet.” And I explained, not really thinking it very significant, about the porridge.
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. My colleague’s eyes lit up. We should write this immediately, he said. But I was aghast. We’d sailed into the murky waters of “off the record”.
Generally, when a politician says something is off the record, they mean they don’t mind it being reported – sometimes quite the opposite – they just don’t want anyone to know it came from them. A prime minister must surely expect that anything they say to a group of reporters at their Christmas party will find its way into print.
But sometimes humans say things to other humans in less formal contexts. To give another real example, a senior politician once chatted to me at a wedding about an issue with their children, who were a little younger than mine. I’m certain that wasn’t intended to go further. Where did a chat about diets fit onto this scale?
My colleague, his ruthlessness marking him for the top of his trade, had no such qualms. There was a good chance, he assured me, that Cameron would never know where it had come from. It was interesting and funny and we were obliged to write it. Which, sorry Lord Cameron, we duly did.
It was my own fault. I knew as well as anyone that you have to be careful what you say around a journalist, especially if you’re in possession of a tasty bit of gossip. Well, as tasty as anything can be when it relies on almond milk.
