The prime minister’s meal in a Yunnan restaurant in Beijing has spawned a national menu. The man has, bizarrely, become a phenomenon
It’s always heartening when people agree with you. I had Keir Starmer down as a non-ideological technocratic centrist dad the moment I first clocked him, with a tin ear for both simple human interaction and the darker subtleties of the political arts. So despite carrying his famous “Ming vase” over the line in the 2024 election, I’ve been wholly unsurprised by him flatfooting and pratfalling through jagged shards of porcelain ever since, living down to all my worst fears. Now absolutely everybody else thinks he’s crap too.
Or so I thought, until a family visit to China last month, when I established a connection beyond mythical Ming vases. The “Keir Starmer menu” has become a foodie phenomenon.
Martin Rowson is a cartoonist and author
