Food for thought – is the election all about breakfast?

A last minute UKIP election leaflet has just been posted through my door. It urges voters to “Get Back to being British” and rather bizarrely reinforces its rallying cry with a picture of a full English breakfast. As well as saying it will tackle immigration and our membership of the EU – obviously – UKIP also says it is going to spend £3 billion on the NHS. It might need to if we’re going to go back to being the land of the fry up.

Breakfast items seem to be the order of the day. The Sun’s front page features the unflattering and infamous picture of Ed Miliband consuming a bacon sandwich with an appeal to its readers to “Save our bacon. Don’t swallow his porkies and keep him out.”

What does that say about sections of the tabloid press after it had supposedly cleaned up its act? The Sun, according to research quoted in The Guardian, has launched even more anti-Miliband attacks than it did against Neil Kinnock. Remember its “Turn off the lights” headline in 1992?

As somebody not blessed with the utmost grace, I can sympathise with Mr Miliband’s physical awkwardness. As somebody who makes a living out of Public Relations I cannot, however, sympathise with Mr Miliband’s “written in stone” corny, ill-conceived election gimmick. Did nobody stop to think of the gift this stunt provided for his opponents? Did nobody say “It looks like a tombstone and that’s probably not a good thing.”

You sense that UKIP knew exactly what it was doing when it decided to put the picture of the fry up on its leaflet. It’s a shame it didn’t choose one of the other meals English voters like so much – like spag bol, or pizza, or tikka masala. I wonder why that was…