Murdoch Goon Joins Tories

The exodus from Theresa May’s office has continued - not that most of the press seems too fussed about that - and there are now vacancies elsewhere in the Tory machinery, so once more, the revolving door between the right-leaning media and our Government has been pressed into action. The result is that yet another taker of the Murdoch shilling has passed through that door to become a Special Advisor (SpAd).

Behold another fine specimen of lobby group idiocy

Who is the latest lucky recipient of publicly funded largesse? Step forward the singularly moronic Dylan Sharpe, who had been spokesman for the Sun newspaper, and before that a spinner for campaigns like NO To AV and the Countryside Alliance. Sharpe is another of those right-wingers who pass effortlessly between the Astroturf lobby groups, PR agencies, campaign groups, media outlets and yes, political parties.

They are as in touch with the real world as all the other overpaid hacks, policy wonks, lobbyists and spinners with whom they mix in another of those closed worlds where the little people are not admitted, the kind of places where they really believe that those trousering annual incomes of £70,000 or more are not so well off.

But one thing appears to have concerned Sharpe, and that is his Twitter back catalogue, which he has ruthlessly purged. And that is a pity, because it was a thing of unexpected joy, a reminder of just how long on mouth artistry and short on applied intellect so many of this bottom-feeding class of hangers-on really is under all the gloss.

It was Sharpe who mishandled the Sun’s last use of the “Page 3” topless model. The Murdoch goons claimed to have had a “mammary lapse” (laugh? I thought I’d never start) and Sharpe then sent the unsolicited topless photo to the likes of Lucy Manning, Kay Burley and Harriet Harman. This was stupidity on the grandest of scales. But Sharpe then wanted everyone to know he had been the victim (of his own stupidity, no doubt).

Sharpe made a prize tit of himself again two months after his Page 3 gaffe - all there on Twitter, too. But this was as nothing to his attempt in May 2015 to compare a photo of a woman whose baby had been pulled alive from the rubble of the Nepal earthquake to then Labour leader Mil The Younger. It should have been a career-ending gaffe. But the kinds of rules applying to the little people are not enforced in the Baby Shard bunker.

So Sharpe was still in post in December 2015 when yet another gaffe saw him propose press censorship - but only of papers that had not signed up to sham press regulator IPSO. Foul-ups like those may be the reason that he has wiped so much of his Twitter output - but fear not, here on Zelo Street, all has been preserved so that anyone who wants to know can see what a prize plonker the Tories’ latest SpAd is.

And looking at the level of idiocy on view, anyone might get the impression that the bar has been set at a rather low level when it comes to this Civil Service admission stream. All I will add to that is “you might wish to say that - I can’t possibly comment”.