Wednesday morning gave us the most underwhelming reveal since the Taylor Swift/Ice Spice Karma collaboration.
For those of you don’t live your lives on Twitter, ‘The Secret Tory’ is a ‘hilarious’ Twitter account that has amassed almost 300,000 followers by claiming to be an anonymous Conservative MP, trashing the party and many of their supposed colleagues.
Last night the account announced it would be revealing its true identity at 9am this morning, claiming to be a bona fide Tory MP who would be resigning with immediate effect and triggering a by-election in their constituency.
Speculation was rife with gullible Twitter users frenetically trying to work out which MP was going to stick the knife in.
But, as anyone with a brain could have told you, it turned out to be a damp squib.
The account published a toe-curling two-minute sketch that was in equal measure underwhelming and unfunny.
It ‘revealed’ that, surprise, surprise the account did NOT belong to a sitting Tory MP or even a Tory at all, but instead Yorkshireman and personal trainer Henry Morris.
The satirical account, which is staunchly anti-Conservative, gained prominence when Brexit was dominating the headlines prior to the UK’s exit from the EU.
Eagle-eyed tweeters would have known that this was all a ruse. After all, the @secrettory12 handle began life as a parody account of ludicrous Brexit fantasist Mark Francois before ‘rebranding’ as a Michael Gove spoof later that year.
It became The Secret Tory in 2020 and Morris even published a book under the alias (The Diary of a Secret Tory MP: (Almost!) True Stories from the Heart of British Politics) in 2022.
He told the BBC: ““Other people discover they’re good at things like ballet or darts. Turns out I’m very good at pretending to be a Tory MP”.
Punching Up would argue that he isn’t as good as he says he is. Very few were truly fooled by this ‘satire’ and all that the stunt achieved was leaving people underwhelmed when the explosive reveal turned out to be a man who looks like he spends his weekends crocodile hunting.
Our advice: Don’t quit the day job, Jack.