Candidates love to be seen in their kitchen when touting for votes. But who’d be handiest with a Primus stove?
The Conservative leadership election, which, even since the 1922 Committee changed the rules, still has about eight gruelling years to run, is mitigated for me (admittedly, only slightly) by the prospect that we may yet get to nosy around a few more political kitchens. As I write, only Dominic “I am not a feminist” Raab has let us into his: an eerily pristine pastel number that brought to mind the set of a low-rent farce in a theatre where the budget is too small for decent props. But if the other candidates behave as politicians tend to do at these moments – from Thatcher on, they’ve never been able to resist the temptation to try and make themselves look “ordinary” (ie non-weird) by being seen to do a vigorous spot of washing up – it’s possible that by the time you read this, we will at last know whether Andrea Leadsom ever did splash out on her very own pizza oven (“Look, Laura, this mozzarella is actually from Hampshire …”).
The kitchen on which I most longed to feast my eyes in the run-up to the MPs’ vote was that of Rory Stewart, speaker of shopping-centre Dari and international adventurer extraordinaire. What can it be like, I wonder? I picture the kitchen-parlour at Dove Cottage in Grasmere: gloomy, low-ceilinged and all but dominated by the kind of temperamental range on which Dorothy Wordsworth once baked mutton pies (Stewart is the MP for Penrith and the Border, not far away; he’s also known for his fondness for memorising poetry by heart). But perhaps this isn’t hardcore enough. Maybe Rory likes to cook on a Primus stove when he’s up north – or maybe he has dug a fire pit, over which a whole lamb might be spit-roasted. Such a thing could come in handy should the members of the Penrith Conservative Association ever try to deselect him.
Related: How Rory Stewart went from 'Florence of Belgravia' to PM hopeful
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