I find Miliband’s fridge and its contents more interesting than the Foreign Secretary
Did you see David Miliband’s fridge? It was massive. I saw it in a photograph in a Times magazine article about the brainy young Foreign Secretary. The pictures were intended to illustrate the would-be Prime Minister’s human side, but the fridge was more interesting than the man: probably the first case in history of a Cabinet minister being upstaged by a refrigerator.
There was also a bewildering picture of Mr Miliband wearing loafers without socks. One sees the case for a shoes-and-socks combination. One sees the case for socks and no shoes. One sees the case for discarding both shoes and socks and being photographed barefoot. But where is the case for bare feet clad in shoes? Is Miliband triangulating? Is the subliminal message ‘human, but not too human’?
We all need a human side. David Miliband certainly does. In an age of down-home politics led by down-home politicians who share with us life’s little joys and sorrows, we need reassuring that a cool-eyed intellectual with a name that sounds more like one of Saturn’s moons than the boy next door has real blood and not some kind of a refrigerant gas coursing through his veins. Conspiracy theorists abound at Westminster and it was only a matter of time before someone asked: ‘Have you ever seen David Miliband and his kitchen fridge in the same room together?’ Nor had we; so Mr Miliband decided to preempt the question, pose alongside the fridge and prove the distinction.
The resultant photograph might better have been captioned ‘David Miliband’s fridge (centre), posing alongside the Foreign Secretary (right)’. This humongous thing was of shiny stainless steel and about the size of an up-ended Ford Fiesta estate. It had full-height double doors with steel poles for handles, and was covered in photographs and fridge-magnets, neatly positioned. Fixated by this monster, I quite lost interest in the unthreatening-looking fellow in a T-shirt standing next to it. Who was he? Who cared?
One of our Sunday newspapers used to feature a series of profiles of famous people, entitled (to the best of my memory) ‘Me and My Desk’, allowing readers to rifle, as it were, through the contents of the selected celebrity’s desktop, and ponder what it showed us about the personality. A less vul gar age would have called it ‘My fridge and I’ but ours is an even more vulgar age and I wonder whether it’s time now for a new series: ‘Me and my Fridge’. Already we have entered Mr Miliband’s kitchen to inspect his fridge. Next we might enter his fridge to inspect its contents.
What would we find? It’s the sort of question a pollster could put to focus-group respondents; the answers would tell us much about how we see our leading politicians. As to Mr Miliband’s fridge contents we can only guess, but in my mind’s eye I see a big green pickled cucumber on a plain white plate, a carton of vitamin-enhanced semi-skimmed goat’s milk and an organic starfruit. I also see three celery sticks in a glass, a range of upmarket dips in small plastic pots, two mini bottles of tonic water, some dill and half a lemon.
How about our other leading politicians, some of them contenders for the Labour leadership? In Alan Johnson’s fridge a Peroni beer swims immediately into vision, plus a nicely ripened pear, five slices of salami and half a cold roast Aylesbury duck. There is also a carton of single cream and (in the freezer) a bottle of vodka.
Hazel Blears’s fridge would contain a range of items that might best be termed ‘M&S Aspirational’. It would include a neat pack of small green apples, a plastic basket of tiny plum tomatoes, some mayonnaise, and (perhaps) an unfussily packaged lemon-andcoriander chicken for two. There would also be a cellophane-packaged loaf of ‘farmhouse’ white bread, pre-sliced, and a healthy-eating olive oil-butter combination. Cooling on the top rack would be a bottle of superior rosé wine. Skulking guiltily at the back of the shelf would be a jar — half-eaten — of Hartley’s strawberry jam and a packet (opened) of Jaffa Cakes.
One feels daunted by the likely contents of Ruth Kelly’s fridge but I would expect to find there some rosaries chilling, some lit tle round wafers of unleavened bread and a bottle of water from Lourdes. By contrast, Ed Balls’s fridge would contain the neighbour’s cat, with its head bitten off. Andy Burnham’s might reveal an assortment of frozen pizzas and TV dinners, a tin of pineapple chunks and a carton of lagers.
Opening Harriet Harman’s fridge door I would expect to find a formidable array of bottles of sparkling water, a row of small jars of Italian sauces from Umbria, a pack of fresh fettuccine (probably Waitrose), some rye bread and a bottle of brown ale for Jack Dromey. Contrast this with Jacqui Smith’s fridge, where a jar of peanut butter (smooth) and what’s left of her most recent takeaway kebab nestle beside a store-bought but good-quality apple pie.
Let’s not dawdle too long over the contents of the fridges of leading figures among the opposition. David Cameron’s (as I visualise it) will be well-stocked with champagne; also in evidence will be the supplies one gets in — pitta bread, hummus, olives, and the like — for a spur-of-the-moment party. George Osborne’s would be wellstocked with semi-skimmed milk and (I don’t know why this springs so insistently to mind) an enormous, yummy chocolate cake, with thick icing. Nick Clegg’s fridge would contain a range of mild and creamy cheeses, some rusks for the children and a large white sliced loaf. Vince Cable’s fridge door would open to reveal two huge jars of pickled onions, and nothing else.
But I forgot to mention Gordon Brown himself. Few would differ on the likely contents of his fridge. Lumps of mouldy cheese, an old Scotch egg and a half-eaten Mars bar. I’ve asked myself repeatedly what Tony Blair’s fridge might contain these days, but I have no confidence at all that Mr Blair would know where his fridge was. Alistair Darling’s, however, would reveal a neatly sliced side of smoked eel, a jar of gherkins and some mini-pots of rich chocolate mousse: little treats for after a difficult day at the office.
Which leaves us with the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. John Hutton’s fridge is empty. Or so we think until we spot, lurking at the back, a bottle of hemlock. Is this for himself or for someone he knows: a special friend? We cannot yet tell. Nor, perhaps, can he.
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