Mug up on today’s tea-tray politics

What does your tea tray say about you? If it’s Emma Bridgewater or Cath Kidston, you’re probably not as posh as Boris Johnson. The former foreign secretary – who is still under fire for comparing burka-wearing women to letterboxes – told the journalists camped outside his Oxfordshire home on Sunday night that he had “nothing to say about this matter, except to offer you some tea”.

As a distraction tactic, it worked – largely thanks to his extraordinary assortment of mismatching mugs, most of which looked like they’d come free with a Woolworths Easter egg circa 1994. And, of course, it’s possible that the car boot sale mug collection is reserved for the reporters semi-permanently stationed outside his various homes, but I think it’s more likely that chintz is seen as embarrassingly aspirational in genteel Thame. And one doesn’t want to look like a mug in front of one’s neighbours.