Top five political gaffes of 2013

Here's five horribly cringeworthy political errors made in 2013...

5 - George 'Munchies' Osborne

The chancellor regards Twitter as a vehicle to demonstrate he is human rather than a cutting merciless cyborg Treasury monster. So a late-night picture of him chomping on a burger should have been just the trick. What could be more endearing than this?

The problem, it emerged, was that the burger in question was not a Maccie Ds, or even a Burger King. It was a Byron Burger which cost an eye-watering £9.75. Twitter judged this to be evidence that the chancellor is himself 'posh', and certainly not a man of the people.

"I was working late on a speech and I had a hamburger and the world is now talking about it," he moaned the following morning. When communities secretary Eric Pickles responded with a picture of himself eating a salad, Osborne would have surely realised the joke was on him.

4 - David 'Pass' Cameron

Like Cameron's 'mission accomplished' gaffe (which didn't make the top ten, alas) when in Afghanistan, this one is another example of the prime ministerial grey matter not functioning properly while on an overseas trip. Dave was in food giant Unilever's HQ in India when an employee asked him the awkward question: "What brand of Unilever is very close to you, and why?"

This was tricky because, as was almost instantaneously obvious, the PM couldn't remember a single one of Unilever's brands. "Right, um, well we have very similar brands in the UK," he began. This wasn't looking good. Cif! The audience were silently screaming at him. Ben and Jerry's! Radox! Hellman's! Domestos!

To be fair, Cameron probably has more important things to cram into his mind than this. But it was embarrassing nonetheless. For a man who, while abroad, is unashamedly a 'salesman' for Britain, he wasn't doing a very good job.

3 - Jeffrey 'George' Osborne

Actually it was Barack Obama who made this particular gaffe - but in British political terms it was the chancellor who was the victim. There is something rather embarrassing about George being confused with a black soul singer by the president of the United States, even if Jeffrey Osborne is a very talented musician. That it happened three times in Obama's speech to the G8 made it all the more painful.

Obama later reportedly apologised to Jeffrey-George, saying: "I'm sorry man. I must have confused you with my favourite R&B singer."

As we noted at the time: It may be the first time that the Oxford educated 42-year-old chancellor was mistaken for the 65-year-old singer of On The Wings Of Love.

The elder Osborne, who secured five gold and platinum albums as a solo singer, offered to come to Britain to perform a duet with Britain's chancellor. For some reason George turned him down.

2 - A Lib Dem 'press officer'

The Liberal Democrats had just shaken up their press office team when a monstrous howler of an error took place. Not much was actually happening at the party's autumn conference in Glasgow, so it came as quite a surprise to the journalists gathered in the city to find the Lib Dems' secret 'lines to take' document emailed around.

Rather than being a bold attempt to make interviews with the press even more predictable, this was a real error. It revealed the extent of their post-2015 plans, and exactly how much they want to bash the middle classes, and even who their real enemies in the Conservative party are.

More than that, it also showed them to be incompetent. Which, for a party trying to demonstrate it can now govern effectively, was more than a little embarrassing.

1 - Godfrey 'sluts'n'violence' Bloom

All the above gaffes might have been cringeworthy, but none of them were outrageous enough to result in the expulsion of the gaffer from his political party.

But then none of them derailed a party conference, did they?

Bloom's spectacular effort in calling women 'sluts' because they did not bother to do much cleaning while at a fringe event on women advancing in politics was explosive - in the self-destructive sort of way.

He chose the same day to get into an argument with Channel 4 journalist Michael Crick, who has been testing politicians' patience with his badgering for years.

Not until Friday September 20th did any of them start hitting him, however. "Racist!" Bloom yelped repeatedly at Crick, after it had been gently suggested to him that it was a bit odd that a Ukip brochure on 'changing the face of politics' didn't have any non-whites in it.

It was spectacularly funny - and the final demise of any shred of credibility that Bloom had left. A magnificent, career-ending moment from a man who, it seemed obvious, simply didn't care.