The worst thing about that Tory Christmas party photo? The spread

Limp lettuce? No thanks. Kate Ng takes a closer look at what the Tory aides dined on at the rule-breaking Christmas party

Conservative former London Mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey was pictured in a Christmas party with Tory aides in 2020 when the rest of the country was in lockdown (Getty Images)

The new image that has emerged of Tory aides having a “raucous” Christmas party last year when everyone else was in lockdown is both enraging and boring. After all, the past couple of weeks have been awash with news of party after party (or “business meeting” after “business meeting”) that may have been attended by government leaders and staff; we get it, they don’t care about us.

But look closely at this new photograph, first published by The Mirror on Tuesday night, and a dozen questions spring to mind – mainly about the food on display. Is that what the Conservative party calls a spread, much less a Christmas feast? Is this how they treat their aides, with what appears to be sausages in various stages forms? Maybe we should be glad no one else was invited.

We see three barely-touched platters of food and two closed chafing dishes in the photograph, laid out buffet-style, as 24 people (including then-mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey) pose jauntily with their Christmas hats and raised glasses in the air for the camera.

Rather accurately, comedian Sooz Kempner compared the buffet to “pictures on the back of the 1980s cookery books your nan had in her kitchen”. At first glance, it’s all beige, brown and green, which already sounds unappealing. Although the zoomed-in image is blurry, we can just about make out what appear to be cocktail sausages wrapped in cheese slices, chopped up pieces of sausage roll, and maybe croquettes, all laid out on limp lettuce leaves and bits of tomato.

Let us get this straight. They call this a party? If you’re going to break lockdown rules with complete and total abandon and hire a private caterer to fuel your festive shenanigans while everyone else was forced to stay in isolation, surely you would go all out. Where are the classic pigs in blankets (cheese slices don’t count), mini quiches and gravlax? Where is the charcuterie board? What happened to the all-important cheese and wine? Not a whiff of Christmas cookies or pudding can be spotted either. There’s not even a single bowl of dip in sight, and we all know it’s not a party without dips.

Another burning question is, what’s in the chafing dishes? They always bring to mind sweaty hotel buffet food, filled with ham slices and ghoulish fried eggs. Maybe that’s where the charcuterie is hiding… or perhaps they’re just filled with lukewarm slices of roast chicken and stuffing. Blergh. One person on Twitter said it was “absolutely scandalous” that there was “not a pint of gravy in sight”, but what if the gravy was in the chafing dish? Schrodinger’s gravy, if you will.

The general consensus online is that the party food looked downright unappetising. One person wrote: “Sorry if that passes for a party in Tory land, I’d definitely give it a miss”, while another joked that they had spotted an “Eton mess”, aside from the Etonian mess seen in the rest of the photograph.

Christmas parties up and down the UK are being cancelled due to the rapid spread of the new omicron variant of Covid-19, but that won’t stop us from fantasising about what we would serve up if we were throwing a proper shindig. There’d be crusty bread to dip into gooey baked camembert and smoked salmon blinis garnished with sprigs of dill. There would be an abundance of pigs in blankets and sausage rolls (vegan ones too, of course). The bowls of crisps would magically refill themselves and the dips would never run out. We might even throw in the controversial Marks & Spencer’s “posh beans on toast” canapes for a change of scenery. Why not! It’s a party! Even if it is in the spirit of snubbing everyone else in the country who followed the rules...

If you’re going to laugh at the country who spent last Christmas alone, isolating away from friends and family and possibly missing out on seeing loved ones for the very last time, at the very least you can do it with some decent grub. Otherwise, what is the point?