The collapse of the Good Friday agreement, the British economy and Theresa May’s premiership are all looking so likely Lost In Showbiz has stuck on a £15 accumulator. Yet none of those looming crises seem to have caught the Conservative party’s imagination quite like the hunt to find a young media personality to champion Tory talking points. With Corbyn-supporting Stormzy calling out Theresa May at the Brits, the party is in desperate need of its own charismatic youth spokesperson, ideally one who will grab the mic at the Laurence Olivier awards to remind the public of Corbyn’s questionable bowing at the Cenotaph – perhaps yelling: “OI CORBYN, YOU THOUGHT WE FORGOT ABOUT HEAD TILT!”
This week, it was reported that the party planned to create “an army of paid tweeters” who would promote the Tory message, in much the same way health startups leave truckloads of cash outside the houses of various Kardashians so that they will hook thousands of teenagers on dangerous diet drinks. The plan was roundly criticised, not only because it sounds very similar to the Russian troll farms May has claimed threaten global democracy, but also because it might look a little incongruous having Zoella trying to flog the roll-out of universal credit in between smokey eye shadow tutorials and Zara haul videos.
Apparently, things got so bad that May reached out to Roman Kemp – a kind of amorphous congelation of denim, hairspray and nepotism, who landed the huge Capital breakfast show with little previous presenting experience – to ask if he’d make a viral video to help drum up Tory support. You may have correctly guessed that Kemp is the progeny of Martin Kemp of Thatcher-era favourites Spandau Ballet, which is probably why the Tories thought he might be amenable to a bit of true blue banter.
As it turns out, Kemp Jr is not a Conservative supporter. A shame, because he did have some good ideas: “I said I would if I could do an action-movie trailer of her running through a field of wheat. I never got a reply.”
So it’s back to the drawing board for finding a suitable celebrity. It’s always been slim pickings for the Tories: the best options for endorsements are Gary Barlow, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tony Hadley from the aforementioned Spandau. Admittedly, they are three very successful songwriters but men with little persuasive reach outside the party’s heartland constituency of sexless Heart FM listeners who are afraid of their own imaginations.
But in the past year a new TV star has emerged, one popular with the youths, who is willing to be a cheerleader for the very essence of rightwing old-school Conservatism. Her name is Georgia Toffolo, but all her friends call her Toff.
Toff’s nominative determinism landed her a role on Made In Chelsea, but unlike the rest of the cast members, whose poshness exists in a strangely depoliticised realm (lest anyone find out their sexy group-holidays to Deià are funded by their parents’ tax avoidance and the pension pots of former BHS staff), Toff is a proud and paid-up member of the Conservative party. She supports massive reductions in welfare payments, flat-rate tax for all earners and the reintroduction of fox hunting.
You might think that would make her kryptonite to Britain’s Jez-loving millennials, but she was so popular on MiC that she won a spot on I’m a Celebrity. In the jungle, viewers fell in love with her positive outlook and jolly-hockey-sticks approach to cleaning out everyone’s shit (in one memorable moment she attempted to take a peek at the collective waste of the campmates only to spill some down her knee and remark: “I’ve got dunny juice on my leg”).
It was all very charming, far more so than a lesser-known clip of Toff in which she’s interviewing Jack Monroe ahead of the 2017 general election. Monroe tells her about disabled friends who have effectively become imprisoned in their own beds because of Tory welfare cuts. Toff stares unemotionally back at her and says: “I think what the Conservatives have done, scaling back welfare payment, is overwhelmingly positive. There’s only a certain amount of welfare they can give out.”
After being crowned queen of the jungle, she was rewarded with a column in the Sunday Times Style.
Well, when we say “her” column, in small print at the bottom of the page it says: “As told to Sophia Money-Coutts”, which is normally journalism lingo for “She phones up once a week and tries to remember which Bullingdon boy she brunched with that week, and then former Tatler features editor Money-Coutts writes it up, though presumably not before its transcribed by Figgy Venture-Capitalia and checked over for any legal issues by Harold Hunt-Poors-For-Sport.”
Anyway, the whole thing reads like Carrie Bradshaw if she was less focused on Mr Right and more for Mr Rightwing. In one recent column her week involved: interviewing candidates to be her PA, lunch with Boris Johnson’s father, Stanley, at the male-members-only Garrick club, a trip to the Commons to meet Zac Goldsmith (“so awkward that I fancy the pants off him”) and attending the Conservative party’s black and white ball, where she apologises to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s wife “for calling your husband a sex god” and finds Boris Johnson so desperate for her to run for her office that he promises to run her campaign. At the end of the night she meets the prime minister – “she’s in a foxy pair of red patent heels” – who thanks her for “all she’s done for the party”, although it’s not clear whether she means the Conservative party or just keeping Bojo and Moggy away from her at that evening’s soiree.
Undoubtedly, Toff is the fresh face the Tories have been searching for. In the same way Blair could count on journalist David Aaronovitch to bat for him in a tough spot, expect May to give special treatment to Toff, even leaking news to her column. You can imagine the briefing now: “Toffee darling, the Chequers retreat was wild (Amber Rudd wore a Whistles cardy, can you imagine?) – and anyway it’s settled, we’re going to be in the customs union – well not the customs union – wouldn’t be seen dead – but a customs union, a fresh one, without ECJ or worker’s provisions. Ciao!”
Get rich or lie tryin’
The expression “it’s not the crime it’s the cover-up” is normally used to describe presidential-level malfeasance, but it also rings true when describing failing musicians lying to the press. A few years back, for example, Robin Thicke told GQ he wrote the song Blurred Lines when “[Pharrell] started playing a little something and we literally wrote the song in about half an hour and recorded it”.
When it turned out they were being sued for ripping off Marvin Gaye, he quickly had to admit that he was not involved in writing any element of the song and in fact had been “high and drunk” for most of the studio session. Thicke was asked in a deposition if he considered himself an “honest person”. His response was a simple, “no”.
This year, 50 Cent went along with a TMZ story that said that after being paid in cryptocurrency for a 2014 album, he was now a bitcoin millionaire, worth over $8m (£5.8m). At the time, he bragged to fans: “A little bitcoin anyone? LOL.” But now he’s filing for bankruptcy, Fiddy has admitted that he’s never owned a bitcoin, and only confirmed the story because it was “favorable to my image or brand”.
That’s not to say that admitting you’re a complete fraud is always bad for business. When Ben Bradley was forced into tweeting an unreserved apology to Corbyn for accusing him of selling British secrets to communists, it became the most retweeted tweet ever posted by a Conservative MP.
With social media engagement that good, perhaps the Tories don’t need Toff after all.
