Delia backs Labour and cooks up ‘threat to NHS’
DELIA Smith yesterday came out as a Labour supporter, saying Ed Miliband was the best hope for the NHS.
The millionaire TV cook joined the Labour leader and the shadow chancellor Ed Balls at a campaign event in Hove to back Labour’s plans for the health service.
Miss Smith, 73, said her literary agent had warned her not to speak publicly about her politics until she was 70. ‘This is my coming out day,’ she said.
In fact, she has long been known to be a Labour supporter. She first publicly backed the party at the 2005 election, when Labour said it was ‘over the moon’ at her endorsement.
Yesterday, she said her support for the party, and the health service, had been formed by her own family’s experiences. She claimed the health service was now in ‘grave danger’.
‘When my mother was five years old, her mother lost an 18-monthold baby who got pneumonia, and simply couldn’t afford to get him to get him help,’ she said.
‘So, all the way through my life my mum has always brought me up in awe of the National Health Service.’ She said her father had also been a staunch supporter of the Labour Party.
‘ The year the Labour Party brought in the health service we had a big poster in our front room with a light behind it saying vote Labour to create a national health service,’ she added.
Miss Smith is a long-time friend of Mr Balls, a fellow supporter of Norwich City Football Club.
Mr Miliband joked that he was looking forward to having some cooking lessons from the best-selling cook, but appeared thrown when he was asked to name his favourite Delia recipe. ‘I like all of them,’ he eventually said.