Poor Grant Shapps

I never thought I'd say it, but I'm almost* sorry for Michael Green The Right Honourable Grant Shapps MP. In a Guardian article about Lynton Crosby pulling out of a public Q and A session (presumably due to recent Conservative PR wobbles)  Green Shapps gets name-checked thusly:

The party’s chairman, Grant Shapps, has also been under pressure after he admitted having been wrong to deny ever having a second job when he had in fact posed as a millionaire get-rich-quick guru under another name while an MP. 

Think of all the efforts the Conservatives have made to convince us that they're definitely not a party run by millionaires and bankrolled by their millionaire friends/donors/lobbyists. They even banned champagne, imposed a low-key dress code and made the guest list secret when they had their big fund-raising bash last summer.

Now, just when they think they might have convinced us that they're ordinary folk, rather than a bunch of over-privileged, out-of-touch champagne-guzzlers, their party chairman gets it in the neck for apparently** not being a millionaire.

Sometimes you just can't win.


*but not quite, obviously.

**I have no idea of Green's Shapps' actual net worth, but 'posed as a millionaire' implies that he's not one. For all I know he might be worth a million plus and might even be able to sue the Graun for libel over that that 'posed as.' But given the Conservatives' desperate attempts to lose their moneybags image and Shapps' own lack of enthusiasm for resurrecting his alter ego, I doubt whether he'll try.