After 18 months of Zoom, Westminster is back. Last night hacks, politicians, lobbyists and kebab shop owners came together in the name of kebabs. In what the Prime Minister described in a special video message as ‘Westminster’s most hotly anticipated culinary event of the year’, an unlikely group assembled including the new education secretary Nadhim Zahawi, former Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn, Labour frontbencher Rosena Allin-Khan and Barry Gardiner, fresh from his debut at Tory conference.
While the evening began on a serious note – with a minute’s silence for the late Sir David Amess – it quickly moved to the power of grilled meat. Allin-Khan raised a few eyebrows even among kebab lovers when she declared that it was ‘kebabs’ that got NHS staff through the pandemic. But in a sign that Starmer and his new team are failing to set the heather on fire, Mr S was intrigued to see that it was Jeremy Corbyn who drew the biggest crowd – with guests circling the independent MP for selfies.
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