Please, no more pictures of politicians eating dinner

I’m all for cheeky snaps showing famous actresses mid-mouthful. There is something fascinating in the idea that for all their celebrity and power and otherworldly beauty, they do, at the end of the day, still need to eat.

But my delight in seeing footage of the famous eating stops short of politicians showing off their “everyman” diets. One certainly didn’t see the likes of Margaret Thatcher posing with a sandwich, or wolfing down a Chinese takeaway or ice cream. She was too dignified. And too busy, implementing monetarism, winning wars and reversing fatal British decline.

This is why, though I’m not entirely averse to Jeremy Hunt’s leadership bid, I was left totally uncharmed by the image the Foreign Secretary posted of himself on Twitter, last week, eating cold pizza from the box. I am interested in his position on Brexit, concerned about his abortion views, and eager to know more about his competence for high office. I do not care about, nor do I wish to see proof, that he’s up to making his way through leftover takeaway. As the clever clogs on Twitter noted, it was a painfully effortful staging of man-ofthe-people grooviness – one wit howled at what seemed to be his removal of the pizza’s pickles.

In Hunt’s case, the pizza – and subsequent strawberry milkshakeslurping shots – jar with his former position as health secretary. You can’t lambast the crisis of obesity and then scoff junk food in public.

After the fateful footage of George Osborne’s £8 burger, guzzled as he prepared a major budget-cut speech (2013), Ed

Miliband’s dire bacon-sandwichmunching (2014) and David Cameron’s knife-and-fork approach to a hot dog (2015), you’d really think they’d know better.