Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.
We all deal with bad news differently but when people lose their jobs in politics there’s usually some level of decorum involved. So thank goodness for Felicity Cornelius-Mercer, who didn’t lose her job but whose husband, Johnny Mercer, did.
Mercer, an all-action Tory MP (kind of a supermarket own-brand Bear Grylls) was axed as the U.K.’s veterans minister after less than two months in the role by new Prime Minister Liz Truss — my goodness, writing “Prime Minister Liz Truss” is going to take some getting used to!
Mercer did seem a good choice for the role as he’s a former soldier but Truss had different ideas. Cornelius-Mercer wasn’t happy, writing on Twitter that Truss refused to answer when asked “which of your mates gets the job?” and saying the “system stinks & treats people appallingly. Best person I know sacked by an imbecile.” Ouch! The tweet was accompanied by an image of the head of Beaker from the Muppets on Truss’ body. Double ouch!
The Mercer family do have form when it comes to online posts. In 2018, Mercer sent the following to a Twitter user: “I’ll give you one chance at honesty. Did you insinuate my wife was a prostitute on the Plymouth Herald’s comment section?” which likely resulted in the most online traffic ever for the comment section of the Plymouth Herald.
Cornelius-Mercer’s tweet was a reminder of a classic of the “ungracious in politics” genre by who else but Donald Trump. The ex-U.S. president pissed all over Colin Powell’s memory after his death last October, slamming the “Fake News Media” for treating the former U.S. secretary of state “so beautifully” in death and calling Powell a “classic RINO” — that’s “Republican In Name Only.”
On a side note, Eric Trump this week said his dad was a “very neat guy” who would never leave documents all over the floor, as seen in a photo shared by the Department of Justice that showed some classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. Congratulations if you had “Trump is tidy” on your bingo card.
Back in the U.K. and Mercer may be out but Thérèse Coffey is in as health secretary and we’ve already found out something interesting about her … when the alarm rings on her phone it plays a Dr. Dre song, which I don’t think any of us saw coming.
We know this because her alarm went off during a radio interview the day after getting the health job and it played a snippet of “Still D.R.E.,” his hit with Snoop Dogg. Rumors that high-grade marijuana will soon be available on the NHS were unconfirmed at the time of going to press.
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“So your energy bills used to be down here, and soon they will be up here.”
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Last time we gave you this photo:
Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best from our postbag — there’s no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze.
“This is the next step in my political career,” by Gustavo Szulansky.
Paul Dallison is POLITICO‘s slot news editor.
