TONY FOUFAS was in his cafe in London’s New Covent Garden flower market at 6.30am when in walked a chipper bloke in a suit, looking to buy a bacon sandwich.
That hungry early bird was Ed Miliband, the then-leader of the Labour Party — and it would prove to be one of the worst culinary decisions he ever made.
The photo of him inelegantly chomping down on the £3.50 butty on May 21, 2014, left the nation in stitches and became one of the defining images of his short tenure in charge of the party.
Such was the ridicule that it ultimately helped to torpedo his chances of getting the keys to Number 10.
The Sun reprinted it on the front page. “Save Our Bacon” said our headline on election day in May 2015.
Now, ten years on, Tony has given his first interview about that fateful day.
And in a powerful chat he revealed that while he may have helped ruin Ed’s chances of becoming PM, Miliband’s green zeal forced unwelcome changes on his family’s business.
Tony, who retired from his cafe in 2018 to work for the family wholesale flower firm, said it had now been pushed to the edge by Miliband’s crippling drive to achieve Net Zero.
‘Killing business’
Tony, 76, said: “I have the Sun front page at home and still find it hilarious that I was the man who sold the bacon sandwich to Ed Miliband and it probably played a small part in him not getting elected.
“I haven’t got a bad word to say about him as a person.
“But I just don’t like him as a politician. He and his party’s energy policies are killing business.”
The extra charges Tony and others have suffered stem from the eco agenda born out of Ed’s 2008 Climate Change Act, which is pursued with zeal by his pal Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor.
Tony says: “Our own business used to thrive in London, but now because of strict Ulez, congestion charges and sanctions on diesel cars it’s just not worth our while going into London — and it’s the same with many other businesses.
“We have a depot in Heathrow where we import all our flowers from Holland.
“Previously we would have gone straight into New Covent Garden market but now both businesses and customers can’t afford to go into the city thanks to Labour’s mad energy policies.
“We now bypass London altogether and sell in more northern cities like Birmingham. It’s very sad that this is happening.”
The New Covent Garden flower market, in Nine Elms, South London, was once the envy of the world, seeing hundreds of millions of pounds worth of trade a year flooding through its gates.
But Tony revealed that the number of wholesalers in the market since Ed Miliband visited in 2014 has evaporated from 54 down to around ten.
He said: “It’s so sad. I’ve seen so many friends and colleagues change businesses or go out of business altogether because they cannot keep up with all the charges that Labour have imposed on us as businessmen.
“It was once one of the most bustling places in the world where you could get a great fair deal on flowers.
‘Feel let down’
“It was as fresh as anywhere in the country. Now it’s like a relative ghost town because Labour’s policies have made it so hard for both businesses and customers to get into the city without being thumped with a whacking Ulez charge.”
As Energy Secretary in Keir Starmer’s government, Miliband has vowed to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030 and achieve UK Net Zero by 2050.
But with that has come stringent green policies that are crippling businesses and pushing up costs for consumers.
They include the hated Ultra Low Emission Zone charge of £12.50 a day, a fee that often hits van drivers.
Tony said: “Thanks to Mayor Sadiq Khan, who imposed Ulez, and Ed we’ve been offered this conundrum of either buying a £50,000 electric vehicle that would be exempt from the layers of charges they impose on you to drive into London, or suck up all the costs that come with it.
“If you were buying a bunch of flowers for £1 and selling them for £2 to the wider market, you would make a loss by trying to go into London to buy them.
“This is all Labour’s fault. I feel let down.”
It is certainly a far cry from the optimism Miliband was peddling on that fateful May morning 11 years ago.
Tony recalls: “The poor guy was hungry. He ate like a man who hadn’t eaten all morning. I remember him coming in and he was very nice.
“He bought some flowers for his wife and seemed very upbeat considering he was going to get hammered in the next election. I remember him asking, are you going to vote for me? I said bluntly: no.
“And I still haven’t voted Labour since because of what they’ve done to businesses like ours.”
