Two beers and a puppy.
It sounds like the name of an indie punk band that might have supported Half Man Half Biscuit on a tour of student unions in the 1980s. It’s actually a tool to improve your life.
It’s not advice. Most problems do look better two beers down. However, a puppy is the exception to that rule, as so many new dog owners are discovering while their lockdown bundles of fluff turn into fully grown mutts that need to be fed through a cost of living crisis.
“Two beers and a puppy” is a test to ensure you’re surrounding yourself with the right people.
The theory goes that there are four kinds of people in this life.
Those who you want to go out with for a couple of beers, but you might not want to leave your puppy with for the weekend.
Those who you trust with your pet and you want to hang out with over a beer. The best sort of people to have in your life.
Those who you know will look after your dog very well, but are not necessarily the best company to socialise with.
And those to be avoided because they are neither fun enough to drink with, nor responsible enough to look after a puppy.
Choose your dog-sitter – Keir, Boris or Theresa?
Applying this to politics is the best way to demonstrate.
You can apply the test to friends, family, celebrities of all sorts
Plenty of people would love to have a couple of beers with Boris Johnson. (It may be that plenty of people did just that when they shouldn’t have during lockdown.) But, he’s careless – with words, with relationships, with promises. You’d probably seek out someone more responsible to look after your puppy for the weekend.
Theresa May would give your darling dog care and attention, maybe take it for a walk through a wheat field. But, trust me, you don’t want to go for a drink with her – the puppy would have better conversation.
It was Labour strategists who introduced me to this concept, as they try to figure out just what they’ve got on their hands with Keir Starmer. There’s no doubting he’d be a responsible pet owner.
So far, he’s maybe convinced voters that he’d be good for one beer. Two, and the conversation might run dry. (Part of his “beergate” defence is that even his party colleagues didn’t want more than one beer with him.)
You can apply the test to friends, family, celebrities of all sorts. Piers Morgan – no beer, no puppy. Phillip Schofield – puppy, no beer. Ant – beer, no puppy. Dec – beers and puppy.
As summer gears up and lockdown restrictions recede, it’s a ready reckoner for our rebooted social lives. Seek out “two beers and a puppy” people and, when you find them, hold them close.
James Millar is a political commentator, author and a former Westminster correspondent for The Sunday Post
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