I feel sorry for Armando Iannucci and satirists everywhere
From Donald Trump’s “Make America great again” (Maga) to Margaret Thatcher’s “There is no alternative” (Tina), political acronyms have long distilled what leaders stand for. Tom Tugendhat has now inadvertently created his own four-letter calling card: Turd.
The Tory leadership hopeful briefly adopted the slogan “Together we can, Unite the party. Rebuild trust. Defeat Labour” when he launched his bid on Wednesday. A graphic breaking it down into four lines was visible on his campaign website.
Eagle-eyed social media users spotted that the first letter of each line spelled out the acronym Turd.
By Thursday morning, it had been changed to: “Together we can, Unite the party. Rebuild Trust. Win back the country.”
Sources close to the former security minister’s leadership team told the Telegraph that online graphics are regularly altered as imagery and messaging are perfected during the early stages of a campaign, adding that this change had nothing to do with the inadvertent acronym.
When the Tory Party produces content like this on a regular basis how can satirists compete with this? This story feels like something from The Thick Of It.
Thankfully Tom Tugendhat dropped a turd but the smell will linger no matter how hard he tries to flush it away.
TSE