iPaulina

During the 2015 general election campaign, the Labour Party and opposition leader Ed Miliband was photographed eating a bacon sandwich during what was meant to be a photo-op of him buying flowers for his wife. The awkward-looking photographs taken by photographer Jeremy Selwyn became a key part of the 2015 election campaign and the incident lives on in political folklore as one of the greatest gaffes in recent politics; some argue, in fact, that the bacon sandwich photo was an important contributing factor to Miliband losing the election to David Cameron, when the polls were predicting a Labour win or a hung parliament. So why did the bacon sandwich incident have such extraordinary cut-through?

These photos became a visual representation of the awkwardness and geekiness that many people felt Miliband embodied; it did just the opposite of making Miliband look in touch with the British people, which had been the aim of the photo-op. Ed Miliband was also viewed by some as the lesser of the two Miliband brothers: some members of the Labour Party felt that he had ‘stabbed David Miliband in the back’ by winning the leadership of the party against his brother and effectively bringing David’s career in UK politics to an end. The already existing image of Ed as awkward was fuelled by his running against his brother; his win created a political situation so fraught that David moved to the USA to avoid it.

Another contributing factor to the impact of the bacon sandwich gaffe was the undercurrent of antisemitism against the Jewish-raised Miliband within the Labour Party itself; the incident gave Jeremy Corbyn’s antisemitic far-left wing a reason to attack Miliband. When Corbyn later became leader of the Labour Party, deep-rooted antisemitism was found to pervade the party. Some members of the radical left used the suggestion, true or not, that Miliband wasn’t used to eating bacon sandwiches (because he didn’t eat pork growing up) to signify that he was somehow unfit to represent the British people as he was not one of them.

The press also enjoyed mocking Miliband’s perceived awkwardness, so gave the bacon sandwich photos a lot of exposure and ran the story for a long time. Miliband had previously experienced mockery in the media for his appearance and voice, with The Spectator portraying him as Wallace from ‘Wallace and Gromit’. Miliband tried to rise above this by saying that he was not from ‘central casting’ and by pushing his response message that politics should not be about photo-ops but about policy itself, but this didn’t have much cut-through with the press.