So, the loud mouthed blow-torch of Britain’s culture wars, former Tory MP Jonathan Gullis, is back, announcing that he has joined Nigel Farage’s merry band of bigots.
Joined online
Along with Lia Nici, who served as Grimsby MP, and former Bolton West Tory MP Chris Green, Gullis announced yesterday that he was linking up with Reform UK, although, it has to be said, Farage may not have had much say in the matter; it seems Gullis simply joined the party online and then made the announcement.
Gullis has long cultivated, albeit inadvertently, the persona of the far-right idiot provocateur, building a CV of outrage which is both tiresome and exhaustingly predictable. A few stand-outs:
- At the 2021 Conservative Party Conference, he declared the phrase “white privilege” to be “an extremist ideology”, and that teachers using it should be reported to the government’s counter-terror programme, Prevent. And he didn’t stop there: he suggested such teachers should be disciplined, and any criticising the Tory government in the classroom should be fired.
- When that generated backlash, he doubled down on social media, daring any “lefty woke warrior” to come to his constituency stomping ground of Stoke-on-Trent North and tell locals they were “privileged.” According to him, they’d be met with “the response they get.” Charming.
- Not content with merely insulting abstract ideas, Gullis has also fired insults at his own constituents. In a bid for more CCTV and alley-gates in the area, he described some of his constituents as “scumbags”, “scrotes” and “savages”.
- On the migrant issue he told the Commons he had “no issue with portacabins or tents” housing asylum seekers, temporarily, of course, until they could be shipped off to a “safe third country.”
- During a discussion about 200 unaccompanied migrant children who had gone missing from Home Office-run hotels, Gullis heckled that they “shouldn’t have come here illegally.” Yes, even missing children couldn’t escape his capacity for cruel idiocy.
- In early 2023, during a row over the BBC and asylum-centered rhetoric, he falsely claimed sports-presenter Gary Lineker had branded northern “red wall” voters “racist bigots” and “Nazis.” Lineker swiftly denied ever making such remarks, calling the claim “outrageous and dangerously provocative.”
Covid obsession
And let’s not forget his moment of glory during the pandemic: he accused the media of having a “sick obsession” with the country’s COVID death toll, sparking outrage and forcing a hasty apology.
Because nothing says “public health crisis” like scorning the bereaved.
Gullis doesn’t do nuance. He doesn’t do subtlety. His politics come wrapped in ignorance, shouts, cheap metaphors, and a deliberately aggressive confrontational style.
He doesn’t argue, he harrumphs. He doesn’t persuade, he insults. He doesn’t engage, he sticks angry, ill-informed posters on the wall and hopes something will stick.
Unemployable
It should surprise nobody that after losing his seat, Gullis apparently found mainstream employment doors locked.
Last we heard, he was complaining that he’d applied for over thirty jobs (as a former teacher) and got none because schools are now “too woke” for someone with his views.
So, after a spell as Mayor of Kidsgrove, off to Reform UK he has trooped, presumably hunting for some corner of politics dim enough for him to shine again and earn him a living which he plainly believes the world owes him.
Because without Parliament, without influence, without even plain decency, what utility remains for a loudmouthed provocateur once the microphones drop and the headlines fade?
