It’s day one of Tory conference and the panels are well under way. As despairing hacks waited in line for their passes – and bemoaned Lord Frost’s dodgy queue jumping behaviour – elsewhere Douglas Ross was earnestly telling the Scottish Tories how he’d smash the ‘yellow wall,’ following the wake of the destruction of the ‘red wall’ two years ago.
It was of course on day one just a week ago that Angela Rayner ranted to a Labour fringe about ‘Tory scum.’ Now Dehenna Davison – whose triumph in 2019 was the embodiment of that ‘red wall’ being smashed – has come up with an elegant rejoinder to the rhetoric of the Labour deputy leader. Mr S spotted her in the Midland hotel bar, resplendent in pink, handing out badges to the Conservative faithful with the words ‘Tory scum’ proudly emblazoned on them.
Davison, considered by many to be a rising star in the party, told Steerpike that she had ordered them herself from an independent website – a nice contrast with the ‘approved’ merchandise on sale at the overpriced Conservative party shop. It was of course Aneurin Bevan’s speech about the Tories being ‘lower than vermin’ in 1948 which spawned thousands of ‘vermin’ clubs across the country for young Conservative activists – including one Margaret Roberts, later best known as Mrs Thatcher.
She was later to write in her memoirs about the blue mice pins they wore as a tribute to Bevan’s speech. Will Davison one day be following in the footsteps of the famous Iron Lady?
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