Ed Balls on food and politics

The Strand Group at King’s College London usually holds events about contemporary history or macro-economics, so it was quite a change to listen last night to Ed Balls, Rachel Johnson and Angela Hartnett talk about food, with politics very much the side order.

They were all entertaining, talking about appearing together on a TV programme about cooking, and all three are promoting books for the Christmas market, but I was mostly interested in the glancing references to politics. Hartnett talked about her time as chef-patron at The Connaught, where Gordon Brown would dine with Rupert Murdoch at table 35, which was out of sight.

Johnson was asked if her brother Boris was a good cook and said no: his fallback dish was something he called Gosky patties (it’s an Edward Lear reference, I think), which consisted of oats and butter, fried with anything he could find in the fridge. She insisted that, although she and her brothers were all privately educated, they were not rich, and said that one Christmas their mother had forgotten to order a turkey so the three boys were sent out to the Portobello Road to see what they could buy, and came back with a capon from a halal butcher.

Balls revealed that he never tastes the food as he cooks it (I’m the same) because “I don’t want to ruin the surprise”, and said that now that Yvette Cooper, his wife, has rejoined the shadow cabinet, he will have to cook more food that can be reheated – he obviously expects more working late nights.

Quiz question: Who are Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay? Answer at the bottom of today’s email.

No 10 tried to clear up confusion about socialising before Christmas, but in my view some mixed messages are inevitable because of the uncertainty about how bad the new variant is
The British and Irish governments sounded optimistic that the dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol will be resolved – but not this year
Teacher shortage problem incoming: only 82 per cent of secondary school teachers needed were recruited this year. “Huge miss in physics,” said Sam Freedman: “Just 22 per cent of the target met. Lowest number ever”

Rentoul’s reading list

Andrew Gimson captured some of the voices of Old Bexley and Sidcup, which is voting in a by-election today
I wrote about Matt Hancock’s hopes of returning to government
The Ipsos MORI research on conspiracy theories, about which I wrote yesterday, is here, and the video of yesterday’s event is here

And finally

Until 1873, Japanese hours varied by season. There were six hours between sunrise and sunset, so a daylight hour in summer was one-third longer than an hour in winter. Sara J Schechner via Tom Whitwell’s “52 things I learned in 2021”

Quiz answer: The co-leaders since October of the Green Party of England and Wales

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