- Thu Oct 19, 2023 10:50 am
#55456
@Yug
Welcome to the New European’s rundown of the top 50 most objectionable people in British public life. It’s a nightmare-inducing line-up of national embarrassments, rabid self-promoters and ranting ideologues, who between them have given us Brexit, populism, immigrant paranoia, Boris Johnson and other horrors. So read on for TNE’s Shit List 2023…
50. Charlotte Owen
Embodies pretty much everything that’s wrong with modern Britain.
49. Jeremy Kyle
Not content with helming one of the worst British TV shows of all time, Kyle is having another go. Reborn on TalkTV, he shouts performatively at assorted “wokies” in search of ratings.
48. Robert Jenrick
When Nigel Farage calls you “mean”, it might be time for a rethink.
47. Katharine Birbalsingh
The desperation of “Britain’s strictest head” to take education back to the 1950s has turned her into a culture warrior of the worst sort.
46. Claire Fox
The ex-communist-turned-Brexiteer peer is sniping at the BBC’s coverage of Hamas despite once being in a party that supported the IRA bombing in Warrington that killed two children. Was co-publisher of Living Marxism when it falsely accused ITN of faking evidence of the Bosnian genocide.
45. Lord Ashcroft
The billionaire former Tory donor and publisher of scurrilous books about, among others, Carrie Johnson and David Cameron, Ashcroft loves Britain so much he lives in Belize.
44. Miriam Cates
Evangelical Christian Tory MP who believes that Britain is threatened by “cultural Marxism” (a phrase often used as an antisemitic dog whistle) and that “extreme, violent and very disturbing” porn is inspiring children to become transgender.
43. Nadine Dorries
Unusually fond of Boris Johnson, Dorries was loyal to the last – right up until the point when he failed to give her a peerage. It would have taken a heart of stone not to laugh.
42. Taki
His periodic racist outbursts (including “What politically correct newspapers refer to as ‘disaffected young people’ are black thugs, sons of black thugs and grandsons of black thugs”) have not prevented Taki Theodoracopulos, playboy son of a Greek shipping magnate, from hanging on to his Spectator column since 1977.
41. Matt Le Tissier
Once a brilliant footballer, was Le Tissier’s head turned by constantly being told only his individualism prevented him from winning more than his eight England caps? He now expresses his disregard for convention by voicing absurd and offensive conspiracy theories
40. Stanley Johnson
Boris Johnson’s father was accused of inappropriately touching the Conservative MP Caroline Nokes and of groping the journalist Ailbhe Rea. Johnson senior’s first wife, Charlotte Fawcett, told the biographer Tom Bower: “He hit me many times, over many years… He broke my nose. He made me feel like I deserved it.”
39. Michelle Mone
Tory peer, Mone personally recommended PPE Medpro to the government during the Covid pandemic. The company then won a £200m contract to supply equipment, much of which didn’t work.
38. Tim Martin
The boss of the Wetherspoon pub chain, he campaigned for Brexit but wants an exemption so he can hire more foreign workers. On economic damage from Brexit, he says: “I just don’t see it. I just don’t think it’s true.”
37. Nick Timothy
The man who wiped out Theresa May’s majority by convincing her to pursue the “dementia tax”, it was only natural that Timothy should go on to a column in the Telegraph, where he rages against migration and the BBC.
36. Toby Young
Not as clever or interesting as his dad, the sociologist Michael Young, little Toby should perhaps have been told to talk less and listen more. A climate change sceptic, a lockdown sceptic and a Eurosceptic, Young’s main gift is the ability to be wrong about everything
35. Laurence Fox
The cretin’s cretin
34. Carole Malone
If these migrants don’t like it here – Lee Anderson is right – they should shove off back to France,” wrote Malone, who is married to a Bosnian, in August.
33. Brendan O’Neill
The king of whataboutery, former Marxist-turned-libertarian bore O’Neill is a one-trick pony who can be dragged from his stable for a tediously predictable defence of the indefensible, from Russell Brand (“there is a dearth of democratic scepticism in the ‘Believe women’ lobby”) to Laurence Fox (“the middle-class mob that has formed with unholy speed to demand that GB News be officially sanctioned…
32. Amanda Platell
Despite being someone who believed the sight of William Hague in chinos sipping from a coconut at the Notting Hill Carnival would be a massive vote-winner, Tory spin doctor-turned-Mail columnist Platell still has the self-confidence to tell everyone else where they are going wrong.
31. Darren Grimes
Smug, annoying Brexit campaigner-turned-smug, annoying talking head.
30. Russell Brand
With the dress sense of a Dickensian street urchin and an acute case of verbal diarrhoea, Brand went from successful comic and screen actor to ranting conspiracy theorist
29. Desmond Swayne
Best known for “blacking up” at a 2019 party (and later calling blackface “an entirely acceptable bit of fun”), the preening New Forest West MP’s recent campaigns include calling for schoolchildren to address female teachers as “ma’am” (because “it was good enough for her late majesty”) and insisting that Keir Starmer is plotting with Brussels to overthrow Brexit (if only).
28. Jonathan Gullis
Earlier this year, when the scandal of 200 unaccompanied migrant children who have gone missing from UK hotels was raised in parliament, the MP for Stoke-on-Trent North shouted, “Well, they shouldn’t have come here illegally”. One of the great pleasures of the next general election will be to see Gullis – trailing in local polling by over 12% – lose his seat.
27. Andrew Bridgen
So bananas and so unpleasant that even today’s Conservative Party had enough of him
26. Daniel Hannan
Self-styled Brexit intellectual, the unbelievably pompous Hannan was a relentless Covid lockdown sceptic, and argued that the virus was not as dangerous as was widely believed. Wants to scrap the BBC
25. Matt Hancock
As health secretary during the Covid pandemic, he incompetently allowed patients discharged from hospital to return to care homes without being tested. Thousands died as a result.
24. David Frost
The booze peddler-turned-hopeless Brexit negotiator-turned-Telegraph windbag, Frost is perhaps the most over-promoted man in Britain
23. George Osborne
The highly smooth former chancellor, former editor of the Standard, former Blackrock banker, former chairman of trustees of the British Museum-turned-podcaster is perhaps best remembered for introducing austerity in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. That policy brought misery to millions. The sight of banks being bailed out while taxpayers shouldered the burden of the economic recovery helped to usher in Britain’s new populist age.
22. Allister Heath
A ludicrous egg-headed Europhobe, Heath is editor of the Sunday Telegraph. Increasingly unhinged,
21. Dan Wootton
One half of an unspeakably sordid on-air episode that occurred on GB News, the unspeakably sordid TV channel. He was suspended by GB News and sacked by the Mail.
20. Rishi Sunak
Peevish, narrow-minded and, lest we forget, unelected, Sunak is much more ideological, right wing and tribal than he first appears.
19. Jim Davidson
Who would have imagined that the man who spent much of the late 1970s doing impressions of a West Indian character called “Chalky White” would end up as a YouTuber whose recent work includes “Immigrants? We’ve had enough!”, “They’re coming in their thousands” and “Diane Abbott, I wish you’d fuck off to France”? In a recent broadcast, Davidson moaned: “They’re going to call me a racist.” Why could that be?
18. Nigel Farage
If his school contemporaries are to be believed, little Nigel was politically inspired by a visit to his school by Enoch Powell. One of his teachers wrote a note objecting to a decision to make Farage a prefect, citing his “fascist” views.
17. Matthew Goodwin
Another charmer from the hard-right school of condemning modern Britain
16. Peter Bone
Bone, the permanently self-satisfied Brexiteer MP and Sven-Göran Eriksson lookalike who once called same-sex marriage “completely nuts”, may face a recall petition after parliament’s Independent Expert Panel ruled he had bullied and exposed himself to a young member of his Commons staff. Bone denies all wrongdoing.
15. Quentin Letts
PG Wodehouse, but without the sense of humour, warmth, empathy or talent. Letts is the Daily Mail’s idea of a wit. They are half right.
14. Sarah Vine
The Daily Mail’s star columnist (and former Mrs Michael Gove) declared of Rishi Sunak in February this year: “I’m not saying he’s the messiah, but he’s been a very clever boy.” Yet things have since soured. Vine, an enthusiastic Brexiteer who has complained that being a “focal point for Remainer anger” has contributed to losing her friendships and damaging her mental health, recently wrote: “Britain feels like an absolute shambles, a basket case. Almost nothing works any more, and it hasn’t done so for a while now.” Whatever – and whoever – might have caused this?
13. Crispin Odey
Hedge fund ghoul and alleged sex pest Odey pumped money into Brexit and his operation spawned the careers of both Jacob Rees-Mogg and Kwasi “Oops, there goes the economy” Kwarteng. His investment career went splat after the FT revealed a horrifying list of sexual misconduct allegations.
12. Jacob Rees-Mogg
The most bizarre and ridiculous individual in British public life. A pantomime posho, he is the arriviste’s idea of an aristocrat, with a got-up accent that makes the royal family sound like scaffolders.
11. Richard Tice
Bouffant, ladies’ choice Orbán-in-waiting and the other half of Britain’s most objectionable couple (Isabel Oakeshott)
10. Douglas Murray
Murray is perhaps the most icy and paranoid of the Spectator’s current crop of pseudo-intellectual culture warriors. His views are scorchingly unpleasant, particularly when it comes to anyone or anything that is not, as he sees it, a product of “western” culture.
9. Roger Waters
Waters, the Pink Floyd co-founder, has been slipping into ever-more eccentric patterns of behaviour for a while now. At a recent show at the London Palladium, he took to the stage in a show billed as a performance of his greatest hits. Instead, he spent an hour reading to the audience from his unpublished memoirs. This included a 20-minute section on his pets, including a duck named Donald. When the crowd began to protest, he told them to “fuck off”.
8. Prince Andrew
A golfy dimwit,
7. Isabel Oakeshott
Oakeshott’s political views are like a bingo card of the miserable, close-minded attitudes of the new right. She was pro-Brexit, is a climate change denier, a lockdown sceptic and is “in a relationship” with the head of the Reform Party, Richard Tice. She is a collaborator with the Tory donor and Belize tax exile Michael Ashcroft, and will be best remembered for suggesting, in one of Ashcroft’s books, that David Cameron once performed a sex act with the severed head of a pig. As an expression of the level at which she operates, it cannot be bettered.
6. Liz Truss
The was the briefest prime minister in British history and also the least repentant. Her “mini-budget”, a hotch-potch of free-market fundamentalist ideas, was perhaps the most disastrous piece of economic policymaking ever devised. It crashed the value of the pound, the bond market, the mortgage market, and the pensions industry – all at the same time. Devoid of shame, and bewilderingly self-confident, Truss now flies around the world giving speeches about her time in office, alleging she was brought down by a left wing conspiracy.
5. Boris Johnson
It was once said of Boris Johnson that everyone loves him, apart from the people who actually know him. When addressing Johnson’s many, many shortcomings, it’s hard to know where to start. His failure to lock down the country or to take Covid seriously in the crucial first weeks of the pandemic is one of the greatest failures in the history of British leadership.
4. Lee Anderson
Gruff hard-right xenophobe, with the interpersonal charm of a septic tank.
3. Paul Dacre
The man who single-handedly created the monster that is the Daily Mail, a relentless compendium of paranoia, hatred and bigotry. His effect on British public life has been relentlessly toxic, so much so that not even Boris Johnson would agree to put him into the House of Lords.
2. The entire staff of GB News
Dishonourable mention
Wootton, Fox and Calvin Robinson, the phoney vicar, may be gone, but the cast of characters at GB News remains a sumptuous buffet of lunacy, delusion and poisonous, culture war ranting.
1. Suella Braverman
The person Britain could most do without 2023
With her furtive grin and vastly overinflated CV, Suella Braverman has risen through the Tory Party to become the nation’s most high-profile populist. Unencumbered by a sense of proportion, compassion, human decency or self-awareness
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The moneychangers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply values more noble than mere monetary profit.
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