Guido Fawked – Osborne Beer Hypocrisy

As if to demonstrate that their claim to any kind of even-handedness is a sham, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his obedient rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog have provided another example of their Tory-supporting credentials on the subject of politicians drinking beer.  Or rather they have failed to provide one when it comes to the Rt Hon Gideon George Oliver Osborne, heir to the Seventeenth Baronet.

I don't need to know what I'm drinking, cos I'm on telly!

While the Fawkes folks were laying into Mil The Younger for the heinous crime of visiting the Five Points craft brewery in east London and sampling Hook Island Red, a red rye beer brewed to a full 6% ABV and containing a complex mix of aromas and flavours, they turned a blind eye to the amateurish attempt by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to portray himself as a Man Of The People.

Who doesn't like their tipple? Is it Ed Miliband ...

So Miliband got the full abuse treatment, with the odious flannelled fool Henry Cole sniggering into his lager that the Labour leader “didn’t like it”. Master Cole even produced a Vine from the footage. How the Tory faithful yelped with laughter! But those who enjoy new beer styles and flavours were nonplussed by the hooha: Miliband was just taking a few seconds to appreciate the beer.

What did The Great Guido expect him to do, leer theatrically for the camera? This may be a difficult one for those who think the acme of beer drinking consists of nitro-keg Guinness, or drinking Peroni out of the bottle (my apologies to the staff at a recent bash I attended for making them go and get me a glass), but stopping to understand the flavours of a craft beer is not “hate” or “dislike”.

... or George Osborne? ((c) PA)

Worse, when Osborne fetched up at Banks’s Wolverhampton brewery and forced himself to sip a pint of beer, Cole and his pals didn’t want to know. This, for right-wingers, is quite understandable: the Chancellor closed his eyes before sampling – a clear sign that he was not happy at the thought of drinking the commoners’ tipple – and didn’t even wait for it to settle before drinking.

That last is a dead giveaway. And on top of that, instead of showing support for a craft brewery, Osborne sided with the big brewers (Banks’s was a big player in its West Midlands heartland even before it became part of the yet larger Marston’s empire). And Banks’s Sunbeam is most certainly not a beer of significant complexity: it’s a 4.2% blonde beer more suited to session drinking.

Note also that Osborne does not even appear to be doing any more than giving the appearance of drinking that pint. And there doesn’t seem to be any video of the event. Even the Mail concedes that he was “slightly awkwardly ... sipping the top out of a pint”. So The Great Guido says nothing, and instead exhorts followers to “look over there at Ed Miliband, he’s dead weird”.

The Fawkes rabble caught supporting the Tories yet again. Another fine mess.