How Europe’s proverbial voters explain a continent

THE IRISH breakfast roll is a feat of culinary engineering. Take a baguette, slice lengthways and butter it. Add a sausage, two fried eggs, two rashers of bacon, hash browns and some black or white pudding, cover in ketchup, then serve. At around 1,300 calories, it is nearly half the recommended daily allowance for a man, and is traditionally consumed while hungover.It has a curious hold on the Irish psyche. A homage to the “Jumbo Breakfast Roll” was the best-selling song in 2006, beating Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie”. One academic produced a sociological study: “The Rise and Fall of the Jumbo Breakfast Roll: How a Sandwich Survived the Decline of the Irish Economy”. But it was in politics that the breakfast roll truly dominated.