So, in darkest north London, Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls have been entertaining their fellow Labour MPs at home. On the menu: lasagne, a dish which the newly rebranded Ed – "Honestly, Kirsty, moving forward, my dream is to appear on Celebrity MasterChef" – is reputed to have made himself. It goes without saying that I have a lot of questions about this, and not all of them connected to what was discussed at table (though it's amusing to think of their guests' excitement turning first to indigestion and then sickeningly to fear as Ed, Norwich City apron tied neatly in place, asks for their thoughts on The Future). First of all, according to the reports I read, they fed 30 people, which is an awful lot of ragu. Was this made in batches, over several days, or did Ed contact a friendly dinner lady and beg to borrow a few giant pans? Did he use mince or chuck steak, tinned tomatoes or passata? And what about chicken livers? Where does Labour stand on chicken livers? They are very cheap, which is helpful when you've spent your day bashing the bankers. But, like the cap on benefits, they are divisive. Some people are all in favour. Some simply cannot stomach them.
Of course, logistics and recipes aside, lasagne was the obvious choice. First, it's as comforting as a large majority. Second, its resemblance – at least as it is usually made in Britain – to shepherd's pie, combined with the fact that it is a popular and cheap supermarket ready meal, means that no one will make jokes about it (Tony Blair's favourite recipe for fettucine with sun-dried tomatoes and capers, and the titters its publication caused, live long in the collective memory). Yes, before it is out of the dish, lasagne may be mistaken for moussaka – but confusing the two is hardly calamitous (whether apocryphal or not, the story of Peter Mandelson's mistaking mushy peas for guacamole was a source of embarrassment all round). Lasagne is the culinary equivalent of saying, on the Today programme, that you cannot make any promises this far in advance of an election.
On the other hand, if Yvette and Ed are using these suppers to plot insurrection, rather than merely trying to make a few friends, they should probably think again, menu-wise. Serving pasta quietens the troops; it will not speed a revolution. I know the Italian Futurists were mildly batty, and occasionally dubious, too, but you have to admit they were on to something when, in 1930, they published their Manifesto of Futurist Cookery, a document which decreed their compatriots should dispense with pasta if they did not want to be forever in thrall to the past. As its author Filippo Tommaso Marinetti held it, pasta ensnared Italians within the slow looms of Penelope and bound them to the sailing ships sleepily awaiting a gust of wind on the mill pond Mediterranean. To sum up: pasta is delicious, but it don't half make you sleepy.
The Futurists advocated that Italians cease using cutlery; that they eat exceedingly small dishes exceedingly rapidly; and that they ingest a good deal more meat, fish and vegetables. In due course, they published their own cookbook (a volume I ache to own). Naturally, I can't see Yvette and Ed following many of its recipes: even their followers baulked, on attending Futurist banquets, at some of the more outré dishes.
In 1931, at the Hotel Negrino in Chiavari, the feast began with a flan of calf's head sitting on a bed of pineapple, nuts and dates stuffed with anchovies, and it climaxed with a dish named elettricita atmosferische candite, which consisted of little cubes of fake "soap" containing a sweet paste whose ingredients only a long chemical analysis could identify. According to what I have read, not every diner survived until the final toasts.
Ed is far too busy obsessing over George Osborne to fashion aeroplanes from breadcrumbs (another Futurist delight). But the central principle holds. Swollen backbench bellies may not provide the fastest route to No 10. I suggest that Ed considers another Futurist principle: the idea that some dishes should not be eaten, but passed under the nose of the diner to excite his curiosity. A few glasses of wine drunk as the smell of something delicious emanates from the kitchen will suffice. Send them out into the night hungry... for change. They can eat all the lasagne they like when their dastardly work is done.
