What’s in a name, asked Shakespeare. Some of the star-cross’d lovers of democracy hurtling for a messy end think it’s important. Tory party chairman James Cleverly, for one.
“It’s important that we project the right image,” he waffled, while the BBC interviewer cooed over him. “Thickley is no sort of name for a public figure of my standing. It might project the wrong impression of me, so I changed it to Cleverly. Clever, don’t you think?”
“Oh yes, yes, yes,” purred the interviewer, approaching orgasm. “Don’t stop! Give me everything you’ve got!”
The BBC later denied that standards of journalism have dropped. Cleverly left the building looking like the cat that got the cream.
“Interviews are a piece of cake,” he remarked to LCD Views’ Slightly More Rigorous Than The BBC correspondent later that day. “You can say whatever you like and nobody checks up on you. Very clever, don’t you think?”
We asked about the Tories’ election strategy.
“Easy!” said Thickley. Sorry, Cleverly. “We make lots of promises, backed up with numbers plucked from the ether, and slag off Corbyn. The press laps it up and we get a free pass. Clever, if I say so myself.”
Has anybody else in the Conservative party changed their name as well?
“Priti Patel has changed her name,” said Cleverly. “I know her background, and it’s not very Priti. Her real name is much too long and, well, Indian, which makes it hard for an Englishman to say. Priti suits her like Cleverly suits me.”
The aura of smugness was overpowering. Do you think it’s big and clever to fake websites and pretend to be a factchecking page and to doctor clips of Labour politicians in action?
“That was my idea!” he bubbled enthusiastically. “Brilliant bit of cleverness, I think you’ll agree. Nobody could ever guess that was me! I expect the whole world now thinks that Labour are shit, and it’s all down to clever old me. I’m the Brain of Braintree!”
What’s in a name? A lying deceitful idiot by any other name would stink as bad.