MPs battle it out in the kitchen to prove they are flavour of the month

Cameron’s slow cooked lamb. Miliband’s potato latkes. Clegg’s creamy pasta with bacon and peas. Who’ll get your vote?

Tuition fees and NHS spending. The economy and employment. Foreign policy and, er, budgeting for affordable housing. These are the issues on which we must base our voting decisions.

And this is correct. But there’s something to be said for examining the subtext of last week’s less argued-over, but perhaps more interesting, announcements by some of our most senior politicians. Namely, their signature dishes.

First, in an interview that David Cameron gave to Woman & Home magazine, we learnt that his most accomplished dish is “something slow cooked, like belly of pork or shoulder of lamb”. Next, Danny Alexander issued a leaflet with a recipe for his sausage and butternut squash stew.

Then, my colleague, political editor Jane Merrick, told me that, at a fundraiser for a stammering charity last week, Ed Balls donated “his” lasagne.

Is this a common feature of the political CV? Ed Miliband informs us that he makes potato latkes for his children, from his mum’s recipe. And from Nick Clegg, at the very last moment, the reluctant parental standby, “creamy pasta with bacon and peas”. (Natalie Bennett was probably too busy eating humble pie to respond.)

Why does this matter in the slightest? Well, Cameron’s dishes are both trendy and frugal (choosing two of the cheapest cuts available). Hey, it says, I’m not a foie-gras-fed toff. And Alexander’s hearty “winter warmer” is designed to make him seem warm and fuzzy – although the appalling design of the Take-a-Break-lite (yes, really) leaflet and the uniformly ginger ingredients in the photograph can’t be the desired effect.

Balls’s lasagne is a rum choice. It’s one of those dishes that seems like a good idea at the time, but takes aaaages to assemble (and featuring chopped carrots? Say it isn’t so, Ed).

Meanwhile, Miliband’s latkes score points for being meat-free and for being a family favourite. But this is the man who can’t catch a break, so he will be dubbed, as one office chum quipped, “the man who hated British food” (a reference to his father’s monstering in the Daily Mail).

We should be glad that it’s not the wives’ outfits that are the “shallow end” feature of the general election 2015 (at least, not yet). Even the most unreconstructed of commentators seems to have got past the fact that Theresa May wears shoes and Gloria De Piero has breasts (fun fact, guys, they all do). Female politicians are in danger of being judged by what they do.

We should be glad, too, that senior male politicians know their way around a kitchen, but the Mumsnetification of politics is a dangerous game. Ask Balls (again). When not stirring his béchamel, he’s a “long, slow burn” in the bedroom, apparently.

It’s enough to put you off your food, never mind vote – not the intention.

Twitter.com/@lisamarkwell