Imagine not knowing what an onion bhaji is. Or how to play pool. Truly, a politician of the people
“What… what is that?”
It’s Theresa May, sat in your local curry house called Bengal Garden, waving a spindly, wrinkled finger at the plate of onion bhajis your waiter has just brought out.
It’s an onion bhaji, Theresa. You’ve been for a curry before, haven’t you? You know what an onion bhaji is, don’t you?
“Is it… is it alive?’
It’s a fucking bhaji you weapon. A spicy little clump of batter. Seriously? Do you seriously not know what a bhaji is?
“Hohoho. Not for me thank you. Can you pass me another one of those big crisps?”
It’s Theresa May, in your local curry house, as human as that alien in the first Men in Black that crash lands, kills a farmer and then dresses up in his skin.
BREAKING NEWS. Theresa May doesn't know what an onion bhaji is, according to @jessphillips in this ace @TimesMagazine interview by @RSylvesterTimes #bhaji (register and read) https://t.co/CYveAt6iqb pic.twitter.com/cK2JYy1lJH
— Sathnam Sanghera (@Sathnam) March 8, 2019
In an interview with with The Times, Labour MP Jess Phillips revealed the prime minister’s bewilderment at the mention of ‘onion bhajis’, a food that, whilst originating in India, is now as prevalent in this country as pool tables, or adverts for car insurance containing meerkats, or the music of ABBA.
The anecdote in the piece reads as follows:
The other day she [Phillips] found herself standing next to Theresa May in the members’ dining room. Somebody mentioned onion bhajis; the Tory leader looked baffled. “I realised that the prime minister doesn’t know what an onion bhaji is,” she says. “I thought, ‘How could I ever negotiate with a person who doesn’t know what an onion bhaji is?’”
It’s a good question: How could you negotiate with someone who doesn’t know what an onion bhaji is? How could you even negotiate with Theresa May at all, a politician with all the nuanced bargaining power of Lionel Hutz? Just ask the EU, quaking at the knees, trembling in a cold sweat fear at the prospect of her Brexit deal being voted down on Tuesday.
In a way, it’s fitting that May doesn’t know what a bhaji is. If you were to draw a line between all the opposing forces in the universe hers would probably be directly to the onion bhaji. After all, it’s an almost universally loved flavoursome starter, whilst she is the almost universally loathed, unpalatable end-bringer. Oh, and one is welcome at dinner parties, the other isn’t.
Swap Theresa May with a five foot tall onion bhaji and the mood in the entire country would lift. And it would only be marginally less flaky.
