A little over 100 days into his second term as Prime Minister, footage has emerged of David Cameron doing something that has truly shocked the nation. The footage in question doesn’t implicate him in any kind of sleazy scandal, underhand Machiavellian arrangements or financial skulduggery. No, it simply showed him sitting on an easyJet flight, eating Paprika flavoured Pringles.
In the grand scheme of things, there’s not a great deal of significance to this – it’s simply further confirmed my suspicions that instead of absorbing food through the pores of his skin like some kind of intergalactic space reptile, he consumes food just like any other human being. Of course, I’d be more than a little bit taken aback if I looked across the aisle to see our national leader furiously tapping away on his iPad, but it’s hardly going to throw a spanner in the works of any future election, is it? Swing voters aren’t going to flock to the Conservatives in 2020 because their leader might have had to endure the steady thump of a young child incessantly kicking his seat, asking “are we there yet?” at 20 second intervals. Nor would it make him any more electable if he’d had to sit through the seemingly never-ending drunken chorus of Come On Eileen courtesy of Shagger, Deano, Phil and the rest of the lads from the well-watered stag party at the back of the plane.
That said, it’s quite telling of our relationship with our elected representatives that footage of a politician tucking into some crisps in the window seat of a budget airline is considered newsworthy. In the age of the smartphone and 24 hour rolling news, politicians are scrutinised like never before. It means that they’re desperate to put across the message that they are ‘just like you’. It’s why the newsreels are chock full of images of them reading to wide-eyed schoolchildren and nodding appreciatively as they tour biscuit factories in hard hats and hi-vis jackets. Whether they’re swilling beer in a pub with fellow ‘working people’ or professing their love for a particular band, they want nothing more than to be relatable, ordinary, everyday folks as opposed to being little more than rhetoric spitting cyborgs disguised in human flesh.
It’s often around election time, when the spotlight is at its most intense, that the political PR machine can begin to stutter and our politicians can get caught out. It’s at these times that we realise that despite their best efforts to convince us otherwise, politicians can be a bit odd. When Cameron tucked into a hot dog with a knife and fork, it was looked upon with the sneering contempt of a snotty barista being asked to explain the difference between a latte and a cappuccino. In just the last few months, the Twittersphere reeled at images of Jeremy Corbyn taking the tube, as if his parliamentary status means that every day, he must be fired towards Westminster in a cannon in order to avoid contact with the general public. The way people went on about it, you’d think that the confession that he doesn’t really watch a lot of telly had been the nail in Ed Miliband’s electoral coffin. People were in uproar – after all, can we really trust a man with nuclear launch codes if he’s clueless on who went out on Bake Off last week?
Still, through gritted teeth, you have to pity them sometimes. So deeply ingrained into the British psyche is our ‘us and them’ mentality towards those in office that we’re flabbergasted when they do something even remotely normal. You could argue that they’re out of touch, that they don’t know the meaning of an honest days’ work and that when you’re able to claim expenses upwards of thirty pounds for a single breakfast, you’ve long since resigned the right to be called a ‘normal’ person at all. Even if that was true of every MP, they’re still people. So why is it that seeing them performing the most basic of everyday human tasks provokes the same response as seeing a dog walking on its hind legs?
Politicians can’t do right for doing wrong. Any slip ups are pounced upon and amplified by the media and then forever embedded into the public’s memory. Why? Because regardless of our political inclinations, we quite enjoy seeing our politicians squirm every now and again. That’s fair enough, but it only seems fair that we give them credit where it’s due and accept that they’re entitled to a life outside of Parliament; a life in which they’re invariably bound to do the ordinary everyday things that any other human might do, whether it’s popping down the shops for some milk or taking some time out to recharge your batteries.
You’re more than welcome to your opinion of David Cameron. You can question his ideals, criticise his policies and challenge his beliefs. In these pictures, though, he just looks like a bloke going on holiday. The greatest part is, they aren’t not even staged. Enjoy your crisps, Prime Minister – just make sure you keep the aisles clear of any luggage.
Words by Thomas Johnston