Paul Kirkley: How my #ElectionMilk became a General Election issue
Well, here we are. My last column before the election, and – unless all the pollsters have been on the laughing gas – the last under a Conservative government. Possibly the last ever Conservative government. Or possibly just the start of a five-year interregnum, before Nigel Farage is elected the next Tory PM – who knows?
Anyway, I’ve been doing my bit to contribute to election fever via the medium of milk. And no, I don’t mean it was me who chucked that milkshake at old frogface (I don’t have an OnlyFans account to promote, you’ll be relieved to hear). I’m talking about the four-pint carton of milk I bought in Milton Tesco last week, that subsequently became something of a minor internet phenomenon.
I’d just popped into ‘the big Tez’ on my way home from work when I happened to notice that the milk in my basket had a use-by date of 5 July. This still being nine days away from the election, I took a photo of the label, and tweeted: “Reasons to be cheerful: have just bought some milk that will outlive the Tory government.”
Well, it ‘blew up’, as the kids say, and before I knew it, that carton of milk had been seen by a million people, and liked by more than 50,000 of them. Reader, I felt like the most popular girl in school.
On Facebook, people were taking the picture and passing it off as their own, which is how Facebook works. “I love that #ElectionMilk is now a thing!” said one user. Then Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Attorney General, weighed in by retweeting my original with the message: “Funny. But not funny if it doesn’t happen! If people want change, they need to vote for it.” That’s right: I was no longer just a silly internet joker. I was now a major force for democratic change. (Not that I was letting it go to my head, you understand.)
Of course, after a few hours basking in the applause, the inevitable backlash began. Some critics were wittier than others: “You’ve also bought some milk that’ll curdle on the first day of a Labour government,” one wag pointed out. But several just sent pictures of migrants “storming the beaches” of Britain on 5 July. Quite a few were at pains to point out that the incoming Labour government were just “red Tories”. “Pathetic,” said another, pithily. And one man took offence over the fact the milk was semi-skimmed, advising me that “proper milk has a blue label” and that “your Mum dresses you funny”. Not gonna lie: I was ready for criticism from both left and right, but did not expect the blue milkies to come at me.
My favourite response, though, was the woman who wrote: “Brilliant. I did giggle. But the cow it came from lost its calf and the calf is probably dead.” Oh. Buzzkill. Still, it gave her a giggle, and that’s the important thing, right?
In the spirit of full disclosure, though, I must inform you that, for all his celebrity status as a beacon of hope for the future (shut up, he was), old milky did not, in fact, live to see the bright new electoral dawn. He gave his life so that my son might enjoy his Honey Nut Loops. So it is now the duty of all of us to build a better tomorrow in his name.
Summer’s finally here, bringing with it a giddy rush of pointless, self-defeating grandstanding under the name of ‘activism’, with the pressure group Fossil Free Books imperilling the future of those famously terrible threats to humanity, book festivals, and Just Stop Oil targeting those gas-guzzling monsters at [checks notes] Stonehenge. Bless. They’re lovely at that age, aren’t they?
Look, I’m no geologist, but if there’s one thing we can safely say about the stones at Stonehenge it’s that they must have the lowest carbon footprint of just about anything on Earth. Those guys have literally not budged an inch in 5,000 years. They make Greta Thunberg look like Jeremy Clarkson.
Am I just getting old, or are these people genuinely terrible at this? If I was a tinfoil hat conspiracy type – you know, those people who love to talk about ‘psyops’ and ‘false flags’ – then I’d almost be tempted to believe these activists are in the pay of Big Oil. But I’m not, so I don’t. I just think they are to winning hearts and minds what Rishi Sunak is to winning elections (probably).
The argument Just Stop Oil would make, of course, is that it’s easy to be pro-environment until it comes to putting your money where your mouth is, and making hard choices. To which I would say: nope, I am absolutely prepared to put my money where my mouth is. Hit me where it hurts with green taxes. Fine me for not recycling. Price me out of my car. Focus on things that will actually make a difference. But to do that, of course, you actually have to put in the hard yards of building your case, and a platform on which to make it. Far easier just to chuck a bit of paint around.
Fossil Free Books, meanwhile, have taken umbrage at the investment firm Baillie Gifford, whose financial support for book festivals – including our own Cambridge Literary Festival – has been essential to Britain’s publishing and ideas eco-system in recent years. And this despite the fact that Baillie Gifford only invests two per cent of its money in fossil fuels – much lower than the market average of 11 per cent, and considerably less than the company’s investment in renewables.
But sure, go ahead and target the book industry. Because if there’s one thing the world obviously needs right now, it’s fewer people reading books.
Closer to home, pro-Palestinian protesters spray-painted the University of Cambridge’s Senate House. I shared my view on these protests in last month’s column (in a nutshell: er… maybe they have a point, maybe they don’t. Other experts are available). But I happened to be walking past the Senate House on the day of the protest, and stopped long enough to listen to an activist with a megaphone telling the crowd how “Cambridge is the most colonial university in the world”.
To which I thought: Is this true? How do we know? Is there a world university colonialism ranking we can check?
I’m not saying it isn’t true. I know that a study by the University’s Centre for African Studies recently reported on the ways in which Cambridge had invested in, and profited from, the slave trade, and it wasn’t pretty reading. But having commissioned the research in the first place, the university responded by creating a Cambridge Legacies of Enslavement Fund, which to me shows a firm commitment to righting historic wrongs. Can every other university that has benefited from slavery and colonial exploitation say the same?
Furthermore, whatever its past sins, I think we can all probably agree that the University of Cambridge is a force for good in the world. One that has arguably enriched the sum of human learning – from evolution and gravity to DNA and stem cells – more than any other single institution in the world. And one that, today, remains at the forefront of world-leading research into everything from cancer to climate change.
Which is not to say it can’t always do better in some areas. But as a focus for outrage at the horrors unfolding in the Middle East, it feels as random as… well, climate activists targeting book festivals and ancient monuments.
But then, maybe we all have a tendency to just lash out at whatever authority figure is closest to hand – the equivalent of those teenage arguments over the dinner table, where you blame your mum and dad for all the world’s ills. Not because they’re terrible people. But because they’re there.
Read more from Paul every month in the Cambridge Independent.
