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Tuesday 18 August 2020

James Cleverly Isn’t AGAIN

A week, as Harold Wilson is reputed to have observed, is a long time in politics. But for one prominent but luckless Tory, it was not a long enough time to think better of a casual Retweet and remove it. To no surprise at all, the Retweet belonged to James Cleverly, whose fleet of foot, or rather lack of it, led to him being ridiculed last night.


After the Government at Holyrood backed down over Highers results, and allowed teacher estimated grades to stand instead, the Scottish Daily Record (sister paper to the Daily Mirror south of the border) had lambasted Nicola Sturgeon, telling readers of “Major Climbdown Over SQA shambles”. The Scots
Tories decided to join in the fun.


So it was that they Tweeted out the front page with the snipe “Nicola Sturgeon presided over one of the biggest scandals in the history of devolution, which shattered the life chances of thousands of Scottish pupils. Her belated apology is not good enough for the teachers, parents and pupils who were *affected* by this fiasco”.



Her “belated apology” took no more than 24 hours, which may have been long enough for the Scots Tories to make hay, but it looked significantly more statesmanlike as the week wore on, English A-Level results came out to the accompaniment of a rather greater outcry, alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson dug his heels in, Gavin “stupid boy” Williamson did likewise, and the pressure kept on building.



Even worse for Cleverly was that he had Retweeted the Scots Tories. Worse still was that, as the days wore on, the Retweet remained in place. By the time he deleted it, it was too late, the internet had not forgotten, and the critics were circling.


Labour MP Clive Lewis was one of those critics, quoting the now-deleted Retweet and observing “Meanwhile this tweet aged like a rancid pork-chop”. Omar Baggili was clearly enjoying himself just a little too obviously: “Jimmy Jam Jams, can you give us a clue as to why you deleted this tweet?” And one minute later, James Foster asked simply “Why delete it [James Cleverly]?” Or, more like, why not delete it rather earlier?


That’s the problem with momentary political opportunism - one Government’s mis-step can soon become another Government’s total fiasco. And James Cleverly is part of the dubiously talented convocation very much in charge of the latter.

If only the Tories would stick to Government and leave the sniping to others. Because right now, they’re useless at the latter, and absent from the former. I’ll just leave that one there.


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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Best comment: 'It’s okay, the algorithm downgraded him to James Stupidly.'

The Toffee (597) said...

Annnnnnnnnnnnnd cleverly's back to form. He just can't help himself, can he?

One word for him.

Gobshite.

Martin Read said...

Cruelly named 'Cleverly' is barely more than a walking misnomer. It is almost as if fate is continually poking fun at him.

But really, it is far worse than just not appearing to be that 'clever;' one has to question whether he has any powers of foresight whatsoever! Did he seriously not consider the corner into which Williams and Johnson were being backed? The situation was clearly a lose-lose situation, from the instant that the merest whisper of the 'private-preference-algorithm' being implemented.

Another monumental balls-up! Yet still Johnson opts for another untimely break. The whole sorry mess is precisely what one might have expected from a cabinet that has been selected upon one single mindset and often almost zero ability... Brexit. That such an eventually has been brought to 'fruition' is one terrible damnation of the UK's MSM!

Jonathan said...

Can't be as bad as Esther McVey's embarrassing video for her Blue collar Tories Twitter feed driving around the countryside in an imaginary car...

The toffee (597) said...

Wait for it, Jonathan...

Unknown said...

Cleverley from Braintree, you couldn't make it up!