‘We weren’t asked or involved’: Yorkshire Tea distances itself from Tory chancellor after photo posted online

It was a Twitterstorm that anyone with a sense of proportion probably viewed with both bemusement and weary despair at the state of social media in 2020.

After new chancellor Rishi Sunak posted a picture of himself with a bag of Yorkshire Tea – “quick budget prep brew,” he wrote – he presumably expected a few likes from fellow lovers of the country's favourite hot drink.

Instead, the Harrogate-based company – which had nothing to do with the photo – found itself bombarded with a stream of online vitriol from people purportedly antagonised at the notion someone who does not share their political views might drink the same tea as them.

Boycotts were called for; demands for apologies made.

“I’m out,” wrote one person. “Tory by association.”

“I won't be buying Yorkshire Tea anymore,” fired off another. “And I'm Yorkshire born.”

Now the family-owned company appears to have caved into the pressure and distanced itself from Mr Sunak, who won his seat of Richmond with a majority of 27,210.

“We weren't asked or involved,” the company wrote of the picture.

It continued by making an in-vogue call for kindness online.

“On Friday, the chancellor shared a photo of our tea. Politicians do that sometimes (Jeremy Corbyn did it in 2017),” it wrote. “We weren’t asked or involved – and we said so the same day. Lots of people got angry with us all the same.

“For some, our tea just being drunk by someone they don’t like means it’s forever tainted, and they’ve made sure we know it.”

The curator of the account said they had “spent the last three days answering furious accusations and boycott calls” while some people had tried to pull the brand into “a political mudfight”.

“It’s easier to be on the receiving end of this as a brand than as an individual,” the thread said. “There’s more emotional distance and I’ve had a team to support me when it got a bit much. But for anyone about to vent their rage online, even to a company – please remember there’s a human on the other end of it, and try to be kind.”