Biscuitgate: it never happened

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Gordon Brown is a tragic ditherer who can’t even make up his mind on which is his favourite biscuit, right?

Wrong.

The famous bickie-question, apprently asked of the PM twelve times in a recent MumsNet webchat and mocked by Murdoch knows how many newspapers and blogs since, was never actually put to the PM, according to MumsNet founder Justine Roberts.

In a new comment on Mumsnet, Roberts clarifies:

“The truth is that Gordon Brown didn’t follow the live chat on the screen directly – he answered the questions grouped and fed to him by Mumsnet HQ and his advisers. He didn’t avoid the biscuit question because it didn’t cross his path…

“We were conscious of not merely focusing on frivolities. Fun as biscuits are, access to the Prime Minister is precious and we would have hated to waste time on Rich Tea Fingers at the expense of miscarriage or school starting age. Plus, of course, we’d rather not be seen as a soft touch.”

So, although the question was asked of the PM, Mumsnet themselves never fed it through to him because they thought it wasn’t a worthwhile question.

Unfortunately, David Cameron didn’t think biscuit-gate was as frivalous as Justine Roberts does. Instead, Cameron chose to accept the story as presented to him and raise it in the middle of PMQs last week half way through a debate about Afghanistan and the economy.

Will Cameron now apologise or retract his own juvenile mockery…?

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