Sir Keir Starmer has defended the “Great British institution” of the sandwich after Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the lunchtime staple is not “real food”.
The controversy emerged following an interview Ms Badenoch did with The Spectator magazine.
In the chat, she was asked if she took a lunch break.
The magazine says she replied: “What’s a lunch break? Lunch is for wimps.
“I have food brought in and I work and eat at the same time.
“There’s no time… Sometimes I will get a steak…
“I’m not a sandwich person, I don’t think sandwiches are a real food, it’s what you have for breakfast.”
And Ms Badenoch said that she “will not touch bread if it’s moist”.
Asked by journalists about the prime minister’s views on sandwiches, Sir Keir‘s spokesperson said: “I think he was surprised to hear that the leader of the opposition has a steak brought in for lunch.
“The prime minister is quite happy with a sandwich lunch.”
The spokesperson said the sandwich is a “great British institution” and, according to the British Sandwich Association, raises £8bn a year for the UK economy.
Sir Keir “enjoys a tuna sandwich and occasionally a cheese toastie”, according to his spokesperson.
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Hitting back at the prime minister, Ms Badenoch criticised him for having time to “respond to my jokes about lunch” while not “having time for farmers”.
Ms Badenoch’s predecessor Rishi Sunak held very different views on lunch, branding himself “a big sandwich person” and saying they were his “favourite meal” – specifically a club sandwich with chips and a coke.
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In 2022, former Tory MP Dominic Raab also found himself in a slice of lunch-adjacent trouble when he denied throwing tomatoes at an aide.
He also denied that he ate the same midday meal every day – a chicken Caesar and bacon baguette, a superfruit pot and vitamin volcano smoothie from Pret a Manger.
Mr Raab did concede that he does “love a good chicken Caesar baguette from Pret” – although he had been “tempted by the spicy Italian baguette from Subway”.
Perhaps the most infamous sandwich scandal was when Ed Miliband was Labour leader.
The now energy secretary was captured at an inopportune moment while eating a bacon sarnie, and the picture came to haunt his time in office – and still circulates to this day.
