Bacon Sandwich Solidarity Trends on Twitter on Eve of UK Vote

A humorous social media trend declaring solidarity with Labour leader Ed Miliband went viral on the eve of Thursday's election, which will decide whether he becomes British prime minister.

Supporters of Miliband, whose awkward manner was definingly captured in a much re-produced photo of him eating a bacon sandwich, uploaded pictures of themselves messily eating food in solidarity.

"I will never vote based on how a candidate eats food," wrote physics and maths student Henry Legg with a photo of himself with a banana.

The "#JeSuisEd" hashtag, which echoes the "JeSuisCharlie" trend that declared solidarity with France's Charlie Hebdo magazine after it was attacked in January, became one of the top Twitter trends in Britain during the day.

Many users expressed anger that the bacon sandwich image had been put on the front page of The Sun, a newspaper owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, the day before the vote.

"This is the pig's ear Ed made of a helpless sarnie" the Sun headline read, using a slang word for sandwich. 

"In 48 hours he could be doing the same to Britain. Save our bacon. Don't swallow his porkies and keep him out."

The response was a deluge of criticism from social media users, who posed messily eating carrots, cucumbers and sandwiches of all kinds.

"The more Ed looks awkward, sounds nasal or stumbles over, the more I warm to him. We need someone who cares, not a faultless robot #JeSuisEd," wrote user Rayhan Uddin.

Polls have shown Miliband's Labour party to be neck-and-neck with the Conservative party of Prime Minister David Cameron, with the election called Britain's most unpredictable in a generation.