The new dinner party politics
DINNER parties are a triumph of hope over experience. The host starts with a dream — bringing people together over food and wine — and ends with ample cause never to invite anyone into their home ever again. This even afflicts our political overlords. At the weekend, details of a disastrous dinner between Theresa May and the EU Commission President JeanClaude Juncker were leaked to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for this most excruciating episode of Come Dine With Me!
Currently, London dinner parties are plagued by politics. It is the new house prices — designed to make everyone come away wishing they’d spent the evening with Netflix and a takeaway instead. The Brexiteer bickers with the fervent Remainer; the May fan with the Corbynite. So here’s how to stop politics ruining your evening.
The seating plan
Vet your guests carefully. You don’t want to discover — 20 minutes into a guest’s rant about the economic insanity of Brexit — that you have a closet Leave voter at the table. But since Brexit has hit refresh on the political map (suddenly people are talking up Tony Blair again, after all), different views over the general election are more manageable. So you can sit the shy Tory of 2015 next to the new Lib-Dem member — they may find shared ground. And remind everybody that if the Johnson family can still get on, the rest of us should be able to as well.
Call time on politics
Limit political conversation to a single, more sober course. Brexit might be tolerable over the terrine, and the general election perhaps over the shepherd’s pie, but when the chocolate fondants arrive, turn the discussion to something else. Necrosis will probably be preferable to many guests.
Phones away
We all know it’s rude to have your mobile out at dinner, yet there’s nothing more likely to bring the phone to the table than political chat. “Actually, socalled health tourism only accounts for 0.3 per cent of the NHS’s budget,” says the political pedant, Googling with one hand and waving their spoon with the other. And no tweeting, guests. No one wants to arrive home, check their Twitter or Facebook feed and read: “I am at dinner with a pompous p**** harping on about a ‘coalition of chaos’,” only to realise Captain
Pomposity was them.
Talk TV
Television is your conversational safe space, a refuge from the political abyss. A new series of House of Cards starts at the end of the month — talking about the machinations of the Underwoods is a more appealing option than those of our political class.
Drinking game
If the evening is going really badly you can always drown your sorrows in pinot noir. Perhaps make a drinking game of it. Take a sip every time someone names May, Corbyn or Tim Farron, and a giant glug for any mention of “strong, stable leadership”.
@RosamundUrwin