Jonathan Gullis, Sunak’s latest farcical move

Sadly, this world is not the world we live in. Dodos remain extinct, and Jonathan Gullis – apparently once nicknamed “Jonathan Seagullis” by his students when he was a teacher – is worth writing and reading about. What a life we lead.

Gullis is, as a person, not especially interesting. He was elected as part of the cursed 2019 intake, once signed an open letter accusing the National Trust of being “coloured by cultural Marxist dogma, colloquially known as the ‘woke’ agenda”, believes that anyone using the phrase “white privilege” should be reported to the Home Office as extremist, called the Black Lives Matter movement “a Marxist organisation that wants to abolish the nuclear family and defund the police”, and so on, and so forth. You know the drill.

You also know, presumably, that he is very likely to lose his seat at some point in the next nine months, so on the bright side we won’t have to care about him and his fellow travellers for much longer. That is absolutely good news though, annoyingly, doesn’t mean that his appointment isn’t worth thinking about at all.

Gullis is now deputy chair of the Conservative party, replacing Lee Anderson in what may as well be known as the “headbanger” slot. What does that tell us about modern politics? Well, firstly that Rishi Sunak isn’t a very good Prime Minister, but that hardly is headline news.

Secondly, it tells us that the Conservatives are now being run more like a European or American party than a British one. Once upon a time, Tories were known for having tendencies, not factions. This is no longer the case. Like caucuses over in the US, the leadership now has to think of their benches as a combination of building blocks, and each must be appeased otherwise chaos will reign.

What Gullis represents is a very specific wing of the Tory party, which isn’t just defined by its policy stances but by the fact that they are loud mouths, often offensive, very online and unafraid to pick endless daft fights.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, social media and the right-wing media bubble mean that MPs cannot be hidden from public view anymore. There was a time when, let’s face it, being one of many deputy chairs of the Conservative party wouldn’t get you very far at all. It is by no means a senior job – you probably could have handed it to someone distasteful so they’d keep quiet, then moved on with your life.

That is no longer the case. When Anderson became deputy chair, suddenly all his (many, many) questionable comments gained more weight. He appeared on GB News and they treated him like a senior figure, and not just because they employ him. He would tweet daft things and those daft things would be turned into headlines, because he wasn’t just a random backbencher anymore and right-wing newspapers crave drama.

Of course, all of this noise ultimately led to his downfall, and it is very likely that a similar fate awaits Gullis. Neither of the men is especially interesting, but their prominence is quite compelling. In order to eventually rebuild themselves, the Conservatives will have to start ignoring some of their wings again, but can they do it?

The party has spent the past few years building a powerful ecosystem around itself, thinking it would help it stay in power for as long as possible. It is about to lose, and may keep losing if it doesn’t realise it made a terrible mistake. 

I think I’ll have that ice cream after all.