If you're born with the proverbial silver soup-eating utensil in your gob, yet your aspirations include running a country with a long-standing disdain towards the average toff, how can you relate to the lumpenproletariat? Maybe by showing that you suffer from the same troubles they do - such as, for example, being the victim of petty crime.
Just days after his City Hall chum Boris announced the Summer Cycling campaign, David Cameron has joined the ever-swelling ranks of London cyclists who've had their bike pinched. The Tory leader was shopping "for a few bits of salad" at the Tescos on Portobello Road yesterday afternoon, and left his cycle unguarded outside. Emerging with his rocket and fennel, he was incensed to find that his precious two-wheeled friend was nowhere to be found.
The PM-to-be is in sadly common company: a report last year suggested 52 bikes are stolen each day in London. Alas - if only he'd parked up in Camden, where Design Against Crime's M-shaped bike stands are helping to reduce cycle theft.
An eyewitness reports that the stunned Cameron walked around afterwards as if in a daze, muttering to himself "but I locked it", a reaction which does make you wonder how he'd respond in a genuine crisis.
Rumours of a jowly Scot with a nervous tic pedalling furiously away from the Notting Hill area yesterday evening are nothing more than hearsay.
Photo courtesy of Simon Crubellier via the Londonist Flickrpool
