IIt’s always nice when people agree with you. When I first saw Keir Starmer, I saw him as a non-ideological technocratic centrist dad with a keen understanding of both simple human interaction and the deeper subtleties of political art. So despite his famous “Ming vase” being on the line in the 2024 election, I haven’t been entirely surprised by his flatfooting and tossing through jagged pieces of porcelain since then, living out all my worst fears. Now absolutely everyone thinks that’s bullshit too.
Or so I thought, until a family trip to China last month, when I made a connection beyond the legendary Ming vases. The “Keir Starmer menu” has become a food phenomenon.
Let me explain. While in Beijing we thought we’d book a table at Yi Zuo Yi Wang, a popular Yunnan restaurant in Chaoyang, which is home to foreign embassies and international media organisations, galleries and night-spots. Yi zuo yi wang translates as “inside and out”, but that’s just a coincidence.
It was here that Starmer and his entourage dined during his visit to China in January, a trip aimed at thawing Anglo-Chinese relations after years of Tory frydoor. And in one case, at least, it worked: The Chinese loved him. They liked that he ate with chopsticks. She liked that he said thank you in Chinese. He felt so good that he came to this particular restaurant twice and ordered exactly the same things from the menu again and again. And I suspect, most of all, they loved him simply because he was there, while recognizing him as one of their own, a polite bureaucrat interested in peace, order, and obedience.
Yunnan cuisine has many mushroom-based dishes. In its coverage of Starmer’s meals, the Telegraph reported that many of these dishes had actually been prepared Using Hallucinogenic MushroomsBut despite or because of the magic mushrooms, the restaurant has been booked for months, and we secured our table with some difficulty. it is below Starmer Dividend. Interestingly, the interior ambiance – exposed brickwork, random glassware and potted plants – is pure triumphant New Labor Islington chic; Apart from business people and Western diplomats, the clientele are decidedly hipsters – all ankle-length trousers and seemingly no socks.
As soon as we sat down, we were presented with a printed Starmer menu that we ordered twice. In English. We ordered a lot (though some of us swapped out the Yunnan white wine for mushroom margaritas). And it was absolutely delicious. The only minor disappointment was the rice cooked with mushrooms in a copper pot, which tasted a bit like takeaway special fried rice to most of our party. According to an ex-pat Beijing YouTuber, it was Starmer’s favourite.
And in the spirit of journalistic inquiry, we asked restaurant employees what they thought of Starmer. He said, and I quote: “He was kind, just like us.”
Starmer’s powers of charisma are not limited to Beijing’s diplomatic sphere. Some 1,300 miles away in Yunnan province itself, near the Myanmar and Laos borders, at a courtyard restaurant in Dali we were promptly presented with copies of the same Starmer menu from In and Out, in Chinese and English, which we were probably going to find irresistible. In Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, our son and his fiancée saw the Fuzhou Zhan restaurant advertising a similar style to the Prime Minister’s menu, with a picture of Starmer’s head and shoulders giving a thumbs-up (although the original was probably replaced with a picture of the Prime Minister making the standard UK political hand gesture indicating “Difficult Decision No. 37”).
All this is not much different from the universal allure of the exotic. That said, Starmer can’t be blamed for relaxing wherever he can, and there are worse places than China to be the object of a little admiration. The country is clean, efficient, polite and friendly. In Beijing you can hear birds singing on the streets due to almost all vehicles being new and electric (we heard a woodpecker about a mile from Tiananmen Square).
The streets are filled with hipsters, online influencers and young women impersonating Tang and Ming dynasty princesses. More than 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty over the past half century, and the country’s infrastructure, transport and environmental protection should make any Briton cringe when they consider how nearly 50 years of Thatcherite privatization has ruined our public sector. And, of course, they have zero tolerance for dissent of any kind.
Add to our son’s phone a preliminary translation of the Chinese characters representing Starmer’s transliterated name on the sign in Kunming: “British Prime Minister Star Beast”. I mean, what’s any reason not to love Kier?
