Politics

Ann Widdecombe’s compassionate message to hungry families is ‘Don’t have the cheese sandwich’

Oonagh Keating. Updated May 17th, 2023

Tuesday’s UK food inflation figures revealed a slight drop from 17.2% to 17.1%, but led to a discussion of how some foods have doubled in price over the past year, with meat, cheese and vegetables among the worst affected.

BBC’s Politics Live invited supposedly retired politician Ann Widdecombe for one of her two TV appearances of the day. The avid Brexiter blamed inflation on wage demands and had a characteristically brutal response to a question on what to do when families couldn’t even afford a cheese sandwich.

Jo Coburn: What do you say to consumers who can’t, literally can’t afford to pay even for some of the basics if they’ve gone up the way that cheese sandwich has?

Ann Widdecome: Well, then, you don’t do the cheese sandwich.

Because we’ve been decades, now, decades without inflation, we’ve come to regard it as some sort of given right that our food doesn’t go up.

JC: But should the poorest and most vulnerable be helped out more?

AW: The vulnerable are being helped out.

It must be tough getting through the day with that amount of empathy.

Her attitude didn’t surprise anyone, but it did appal them.

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The snippet prompted this question.

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