LIZ Truss will, barring any major constitutional upsets, become the prime minister tomorrow, the climax of an impressive rise from obscurity to the highest elected office in the UK.
If you’d asked more casual observers of politics if they had heard of Truss last year, you would likely have been met with a no. Some anoraks might have pointed to a famous clip of her hailing a trip to China, where she gave a frankly bizarre level of enthusiasm for opening up “new pork markets in Beijing”.
This notorious clip was her biggest claim to fame in the popular consciousness.
It was funny, undoubtedly, and the stilted performance made her seem like an unserious political actor, with most writing off her prospects as a big hitter. More fool them.
But could Truss’s porcine pronouncement portend poorly for those wanting the Conservatives out at the next General Election?
Just been pigging out on pork belly from Sargeant's, where the meat is slaughtered on the premises. Makes a huge difference.
— Liz Truss (@trussliz) January 17, 2010
The Jouker has dug into the links between Tory electoral success and a passion for pork.
David Cameron
Call-me-Dave mastered a new, friendly image for the Conservatives while leader of the opposition and was just sufficient to propel him into the top job.
Shortly after the 2015 election, where the party managed a 12-seat majority, an MP purporting to be a former classmate of Cameron’s made outrageous claims about a pig and the PM.
He claimed in an unauthorised biography of the prime minister, that he had been involved in a grim initiation ceremony for the Piers Gaveston Society at Oxford University.
The Conservatives’ showing in the next election showed the announcement did not take too much of a hit, with the party losing control of only one council.
Pig score: 9/10. Election score: 6/10.
Theresa May
The Maybot ran on near-weekly defeats in the Commons and so had no use for pork or any other foodstuffs. The Jouker can find no evidence of May ever expressing any particular enthusiasm for bacon, sausages or chops.
Theresa May lost the Conservatives’ majority in the 2017 election, in response to an insurgent Labour Party, then led by vegetarian Jeremy Corbyn – who was put off animals entirely by working on a Jamaican pig farm back in the olden days.
Pig score: 0/10. Election score: 2/10
Boris Johnson
Big Dog was one of the MPs who were forced to deny being the source of the Cameron anecdote.
Johnson came out swinging in the 2019 election, winning the Tories a thumping majority that got Brexit done, to coin a phrase. But was a swine swing at play?
Johnson was dubbed the “greased piglet” by Cameron, a title which only continued to prove its aptness until his luck finally ran out over the Chris Pincher scandal earlier this year.
In November 2021, the outgoing PM lost his place in a speech and adlibbed, raving about a a recent visit to Peppa Pig World, in Hampshire, which he said was "very much my kind of place".
Media coverage of the incident failed to embarrass boosterish Boris and he even survived a rumoured “pork pie plot” in January 2022. Readers will note it was six months later he announced his resignation.
Pig score: 8/10. Election score: 9/10.
Swiners and losers?
In broad-brush stroke analysis, The Jouker’s research seems to indicate a fairly strong correlation between professed porcine passion and electoral success for Tory PMs.
Of course, our methodology is far from exact and if we’re going to mix metaphors, the conclusions are probably bullsh*t.
But we’re just trying to make some sense of this utter madness, just like you are.
