No, you can’t all do Strictly: What’s next for the Tory Big Beasts
Throughout the general election campaign, Sir Keir Starmer and his Labour colleagues repeatedly promised to tackle unemployment, pledging action to cut the number of young people on benefits, and insisting they will deliver first-class training to improve people’s career prospects.
Noble. But what they surely didn’t reckon with is 175 Tory MPs suddenly flooding the job market last Friday morning. Among them were big beasts – longtime cabinet ministers, party pin-ups, even a former prime minister. All are now desperately seeking employment.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg is one who had the forethought to sort out a deal in advance. The former MP for North East Somerset is to star in a fly-on-the-wall documentary series. He should be fine for a while, then. But others aren’t quite such readymade subjects for a Weird Weekends-style docuseries. They cannot all do Strictly Come Dancing. Not everybody can make a second career out of wearing bright linen and Interrailing, a la Michael Portillo.
No, others will need to create a LinkedIn page, dredge a CV from the bowels of an old Apple Macintosh and put some real thought into what their skills could be transferred to. It may be that they need help. So let us present a few suggestions.
Penny Mordaunt – Self-defence teacher
The former lord president of the council, leader of the House of Commons, MP for Portsmouth North and Splash! contestant is definitely not the only departing Tory minister who’d have been better suited to job-seeking in a previous century, but she is the most lethal.
In lieu of gainful employment as a mediaeval jouster or standard bearer in the auxiliary unit Legio II Augusta, then, Mordaunt is most likely to become some kind of personal trainer. The acres of newspaper inches given over to “Getting arms like Penny” after her 8lb sword-wielding masterclass at the Coronation last year shows the demand is there, and if she were to specialise in a martial art such as aikido, which derives much of its technical structure from Japanese swordsmanship, she’d clean up.
Tempting as it might be to set up shop as a psychotherapist just so she can call it “Penny For Your Thoughts,” the people want to know how to move through life as undaunted as the Mordaunt. Only she can offer that.
Thérèse Coffey – Thames Water chief
A woman whose private world is so unknown that her “personal life” section on Wikipedia includes an entry about the two accents in her name not always appearing in official literature, Thérèse Coffey could very easily disappear completely, only ever surfacing in future pub quizzes – when hosts ask “who was the deputy prime minister at the time of the death of Elizabeth II?” – and everybody goes on to lose a point.
But what a waste that would be for one of the greatest poisoned-chalice holders in recent history. Coffey was not only Liz Truss’s deputy, but the health secretary, despite having worked for Mars, having accepted ￡1,100 in hospitality and gifts from a tobacco firm and admitting to sharing an antibiotics prescription with others. She was then installed in Defra, where she’s mainly remembered for suggesting people swap tomatoes for turnips.
Stress-related resignation aside, Coffey is clearly a woman comfortable with a big, unpopular brief. For these reasons there is no better woman to head up Thames Water as it ploughs on in the face of increasing public hostility and threats it’ll be out of cash by next summer. “Coffey’s running the water” – headline-writers would enjoy it, at least.
Liz Truss – Demolitions consultant
It is not just that the former prime minister – a title you can never take away from her, despite only holding it for 49 days – has a proven track record for taking a wrecking ball to seemingly impenetrable institutions, it’s that she always looks so very unfazed while doing it.
“No job is too big or too small,” she could say in her advert, before gesturing at a random building – say, for example, a vast 18th-century edifice on Threadneedle St. “This building is still standing, and That. Is. A. Disgrace. Put me in charge of it for an hour and I will reduce it to rubble.” And you know what? You’d believe her.
But what of health and safety, for the woman who repeatedly said she doesn’t “believe in guardrails”? That’s where the police come in. Thanks to a quirk of history that saw Truss become a world leader for a month (you’d already forgotten, even though it was in the previous paragraph, hadn’t you?), she will be accompanied by protection officers for the rest of her life. They wouldn’t let anybody come to harm.
Grant Shapps – Hitman
The ex-MP for Welwyn Hatfield could have a future just walking up to people in the street and charging them a fiver to hear “the most surprising bit of trivia you’ve ever heard”, then proceeding to tell them that he is the cousin of Mick Jones from The Clash. (It’s true).
But if that doesn’t pay, he surely has a future as a professional slippery eel. For who is the real Grant Shapps? The former housing minister, minister without portfolio, Tory party chairman, minister for international development, transport secretary, home secretary, business secretary, energy security and net Zero secretary and, finally, defence secretary is a man of many identities, and that’s without touching on his pre-politics life as a businessman.
Did we ever truly know him, though? The cheerful man of the morning media rounds reinvented himself more often than Janet Jackson, never sticking to an ousted prime minister’s legacy, always out of the line of fire, executing his duties with quiet, affable giddiness. Evidently, he should be some kind of hitman or spy, taking out contract killings. Nobody would accuse that face of murder, nobody would find him in a crowd, and nobody would dare cross the man who knows where everybody from the past 15 years is buried. He’s out there, and jobless. Do not take your life for Grant-ed.
Johnny Mercer – Keyboard warrior
Prior to becoming a politician, Johnny Mercer served three tours in Afghanistan over a distinguished 11-year military career in the 29 Commando Regiment, Royal Artillery. Could he return to the British Army? It seems unlikely – we cannot afford a world war right now. Could he become a cage fighter in Plymouth, where he served for nine years as an MP, inviting his former Tory MP mates to bet on the victor? Seems dangerous.
The only solution is to enlist for the culture wars, full time. Mercer is already a keyboard warrior who spent enormous amounts of time on Twitter even when he was an MP, but now he can fully commit. “I’ll give you one chance at honesty. Did you insinuate my wife was a prostitute on the Plymouth Herald comments section?” read his most famous social media post, from 2018.
He can now live in that comments section if he wants. The issue? “Professional keyboard warrior” isn’t actually a job, even if some newspaper columnists do make good money. So he may need a back-up. In that case, time to revive the cage fighting idea.
Jacob Rees-Mogg – TV presenter
Even those in recovery after having made objecting to Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg a large plank in their personality over the last 14 years would still watch a reality show trailing the ousted North East Somerset MP as he went about his day-to-day life.
From wearing suits that look designed for men twice his size to his wife’s surname being “de Chair”; his sixth child being called “Sixtus” to his being younger than Damon Albarn (really), Rees-Mogg is fascinating. In fact, here’s just a short list of things I’d genuinely pay to see him do: buy anything in Argos, change a nappy, bleed a radiator, down a pint, and name the three original and three former members of the Sugababes.
The professionals clearly agree. He has reportedly been filming a documentary with production company Optomen throughout the election, which will air at some point on Discovery+. It’s expected to follow the same format as Netflix’s At Home With The Furys, about the boxing superstar Tyson Fury. Whether or not that means it culminates in a fight remains to be seen. What a tease.
Simon Hart – Cat-herder
A tricky one for Simon Hart, the former MP for Caerfyrddin, who lost his seat to Plaid Cymru last week. Hart is a qualified man, having worked as a chartered surveyor, serving in the Territorial Army and as chief executive of the Countryside Alliance before entering politics. The issue is that he’s spent the last two years as chief whip of the House of Commons.
Given the state of Tory discipline over the last parliament, that’s roughly like putting on your CV that you were on steering for the Ever Given container ship between 2020 and 2022: some things might have gone well, the disasters might not have been your fault at all, and what happened is all water under the bridge now the route’s clear, but… good luck at the interview.
Still, he might have a taste for wrangling the unwrangleable, and as an outdoorsman who led the Campaign for Hunting for four years, then made the RSPCA his political nemesis, he clearly feels animals have got too big for their boots. So why not cat-herding? He might have greater success with a mob of recalcitrant moggies than he did with Steve Baker.