This takes the political biscuit

Note for my American readers: The biscuit, in England, is akin to a cookie. However, they are not the large, round, sumptuous articles to be acquired in the US. They are small, neat, and considered appropriate for elevenses (at 11am), to accompany a cup of tea and a sit down (dunking optional). It should also be noted that they may, or may not, be dunked in the aforementioned tea. For more details on this critical aspect of English culture, please see this website for weekly Biscuit of the Week reviews and critical discussions of relevance to the biscuit and tea consuming sections of society.

England is reeling. It is in political turmoil. We are devastated by the apparent lack of decisiveness on the part of our Prime Minister, Gordon “If I go I’ll take the economy with me, and if I stay it’ll tank anyway” Brown. We demand answers. We want to know the truth.

We want to know what his favourite biscuit is.

This is obviously crucial information for all of us over here in Blighty, as we contemplate an election where we must choose between the upper class twits, the middle-class twits, the liberals who’ll never get in no matter what and the pig-faced man with pretensions to being Adolf Hitler.

The story goes like this: Gordon Brown participated in an online chat with some mothers from Mumsnet. He was asked, during the course of this conversation, which biscuit he preferred to eat. He refused to state a preference, deftly avoiding the question with some of the usual political stonewalling. Like John Humphries demanding to know where the bombs are, the Mums would not let this matter go. He was asked several times to clarify the matter of the biscuit, and still he refused to state a preference.

England is thus in uproar.

David Cameron swiftly came forward with a strong declaration in favour of Scottish Oatcakes and confirmed that he would never be found to be indecisive at tea time, or indeed at any other time of the day. He was also quick to denounce the continued presence of the pink wafer in the market.

The Liberal Democrats (Rich Tea) also released a statement to the effect that they would be the ones to assure the British public that they would not be forced to go without biscuits during the recession, and that they would guarantee that the NHS would continue to supply the best in biscuits during the 9 hour wait in Emergency, never to be reduced to the decidedly bland Nice.

Biscuit preference obviously counts for a lot in a land with 2.5 million unemployed, for whom the morning drags through Jeremy Kyle’s showcase of society’s least desirable inhabitants (which at least reassures people that however bad their circumstances, at least they aren’t like them), to elevenses and the choice of biscuit has been reduced to the cardboard and plastic digestives in Tesco’s Economy brand.

The preferred biscuit of the Prime Minister might well be considered to offer an insight on his character, and many pop psychologists weighed into the debate suggesting that such indecisiveness suggests that if a man can’t step forward and claim his biscuit, can he be trusted to run the economy? Brown is well known for U-turns on political hot potatoes, and was possibly sweating over how The Sun and The Daily Mirror might interpret the selection of, say, a Dark Chocolate Digestive over a regular Hobnob.

Now, you may say all of this is a nonsense, but in the UK the biscuit is of great significance. Indeed, the eating of a biscuit could be considered an extreme sport. Apparently, more than half of all Britons have at one time or another been injured directly or indirectly by biscuits. As many as five hundred people have suffered enough harm from biscuits that they have required hospital attention.

According to the Biscuit Injury Threat Evaluation, the custard cream is the most dangerous biscuit. This is a riskier indulgence than, say, binge-alcohol consumption or pot-holing. This changes the whole perception of the argument. For coming forward and declaring oneself to be a consumer of biscuits as a politician is pretty much akin to announcing that you snort cocaine of a weekend.

This is what England has come to. Once upon a time, most of the world’s map was coloured in a delicate pink to indicate the lands that had fallen sway to the great Empire, upon which the sun never set. The British led the world into industrial revolution, sparking such wondrous modernities as global warming and, by extension, Al Gore.

And now we are brought low by the humble biscuit.

I expect all over the world, countries are sitting, shaking their heads in wonder, thinking: “How the hell did they even make it past breakfast, let alone conquer the world? They can’t even eat a biscuit safely. How did they ever rule us for hundreds of years?”

It really does take the biscuit, doesn’t it.