From scoffing 280 hotdogs to surviving on Custard Creams for three days
by Cast your mind back to the summer of 2014 when the anti-independence campaign was showering Scottish voters with promises of an idyllic future with Westminster control where the costs of milk and honey were incredibly affordable.
Chief amongst these imaginative works was a Treasury statement from June 2014 promising that every Scot would be £1,400 better off every year with Westminster control.
It was a dizzying land of plenty. We could have an overseas holiday for two with cash left over for sun cream, enough cash to cover the family’s shoe habit for six years, and the opportunity to experience 636 joyful caffeine highs.
They promised we could share a daily fish and chips meal for ten weeks (the option of mushy peas included), pay for Christmas twice over with spare change for Hogmanay, and scoff 280 hotdogs at the Edinburgh Festival.
To top it all off, we were guaranteed endless hugs with everyone to celebrate being safely wrapped in the warm, embrace of Westminster.
Fast forward to the present day, and how that soft and cuddly UK has aged.
Labour MP Gordon McKee took to social media with a sobering wake-up call on societal resilience.
Asking the nation to contemplate how many biscuits it takes to avoid kicking the bucket, McKee mused: “To survive for three days eating only custard creams, how many do you think you would need?”
While noting that our Nordic neighbours in Sweden and Finland prepare for crises with gallons of water and emergency cash, McKee gently coaxed the British public into building up basic supplies, remarking that “a couple of custard creams won’t hurt.”
It is a striking evolution of the Westminster sales pitch. We have careened from the promised land of 280 hotdogs and 636 espresso shots straight into a dystopian emergency plan where your family’s last line of defence against societal collapse is a crumbly packet of cheap biscuits.
Yet even this modest bunker menu contains a bitter pill to swallow.
Back in December 2014, a blog post tracked the price of Tesco Everyday Value Custard Creams at a modest 35p. By September 2026, a packet of Tesco Custard Cream Biscuits stands at 65p.
That represents an 86% price hike. Meanwhile, according to the Bank of England inflation calculator, overall inflation between 2014 and August 2026 stood at 43.47%.
Custard cream prices have inflated at double the rate of general inflation.
So much for another flagship anti-independence guarantee, when the No campaign famously promised the Scottish public “lower shopping bills”. It turns out that even maintaining an emergency stash of emergency tea-dunkers now requires foregoing sugar for the tea.
Looking back at the grand political theatre of 2014, the sheer scale of the contrast is staggering.
The anti-independence campaign promised us an endless summer holiday of fish suppers, hotdogs, and endless hugs. Twelve years later, the practical outcome of staying Together is an MP advising us to stockpile biscuits that cost nearly double what they used to.
The 2014 “UK Dividend” was marketed like a luxury cruise, but it has turned into something like a budget survival course.
When a political vision collapses from endless feasts and sunny getaways down to rationing marked-up custard creams in the dark, it shows just how overblown those 2014 promises really were.