The picture of the London Conservative mayoral candidate and friends sends a clear message to the electorate, but perhaps not the one they wanted to communicate
Since the weekend, I have been running in my revived 2020 standup show in impressively Covid-secure Scottish comedy clubs, filled with the forgiving laughter of the simply-glad-to-be-alive. On Sunday night I walked the south side of York Place, Edinburgh, towards the Piccante chip shop on Broughton Street. Crossing to the north side of the road to avoid a pile of human excrement, I found myself sidestepping a puddle of human vomit instead, Odysseus steering between Scylla and Charybdis toward the Ithaca of my steak pie. But those two horrors of the Edinburgh night, or three if you include the picture of the deep-fried Mars bar in Piccante’s window, were by no means the worst images I saw last week.
The photo of the Christmas 2020 party of the London Conservative mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey made for even grimmer viewing than the filth-soiled Scottish footpath, or the fat-fried chocolate bar. Was it really worth Bailey risking the mass hatred of the distraught and the bereaved just to attend an event that looked about as much fun as the retirement event of the disliked supervisor of a logistics hub based in the perineal scrublands between the M42 and the A5? Apparently so.