Peppa pig

Saturday

Steerpike

Starmer and the Johnsons clash over Peppa Pig

There’s a spectre haunting British politics: the spectre of Peppa Pig. It seems the fictitious children’s character has become the new fault line in Westminster, following Boris Johnson’s lauding of the pink porker at the CBI conference. Seeking clear blue water between himself and the Tories, Sir Keir Starmer has used an interview in today’s Times to attack the theme park centred around the animated animal, declaring: ‘I have been to Peppa Pig World, of course I have. It’s dreadful.’ Given Sir Keir’s clear-out of the last of the Corbynites, his views on Trots are well known but it’s a far cry from Labour leaders of old. Party spin-doctors famously

Monday

Joanna Rossiter

The tragi-comedy of Peppa Pig World

There is something uniquely soul-destroying about British theme parks. The effusive, American cheer of Disney Land somehow fails to translate in Blighty where no amount of sugary pastel scenery, singing flowers and glockenspiel music can distract from the bad weather. Indeed, if Peppa Pig World really does embody ‘the power of UK creativity’, as Boris suggested in his CBI speech, we really are in more trouble than I thought. Maybe the PM got lucky with the weather during his visit to Peppa Pig World last weekend. But, for the rest of us, it’s hard not see an hour-long queue in the drizzle for Peppa’s Big Balloon Ride as anything other than a particularly cruel form of parental

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris Johnson’s Peppa Pig disaster

Oh dear. Boris Johnson’s much-trailed speech to the Confederation of British Industry has caused something of a social media storm – but not for the reasons the Prime Minister will have wanted.  In a confused, shambling performance, the Tory premier lost his place repeatedly throughout the speech and spent three minutes riffing on his family trip yesterday to a theme park based on the fictitious children’s cartoon Peppa Pig. He asked the assembled businessmen ‘Hands up how many of you here have been to Peppa Pig World?’ before adding: A pig that was rejected by the BBC, now exported to 180 countries around the world. No Whitehall civil servant could have come