How on earth is Therese Coffey fronting the Tory general election campaign?

Compared to most people I'm a total politics nerd, after all, it's my job to study and write about politics, yet I'd barely even heard of Tory MP Therese Coffey until Boris Johnson suddenly put her in charge of hounding the disabled and further impoverishing the already destitute duties at the DWP.
 

Before this unexpected appointment to a senior government position, Coffey was most famous outside her constituency for the repulsive boozed up picture of her slobbering on a cigar like some bizarre female Ken Clarke tribute act.

But suddenly Coffey is sobered up and all over our TV screens, airwaves, and social media feeds, fronting up the Tory general election campaign.

Yesterday she was sent out to cynically pretend that nine years of relentless Tory wage repression and cuts to in-work benefits have been a good thing for ordinary working people, and today she's been wheeled out again to defend the Tory parliamentary candidate who said that people on benefits should be put to death!

Picking someone most of the public have never even heard of to front their election campaign seems like an extremely odd strategy for the Tories to adopt.

Yes, there's often someone like Barry Gardiner in 2017, who comes from nowhere to charm the public during an election campaign, but a charmless figure like Coffey, monotonously reading out scripted lies is never going to be able to enchant the nation is she?

It's interesting to look at the reasons someone as limited as Coffey is being pushed as the face of Conservatism.

Firstly Boris Johnson is in hiding.

He can't go out in public because he's getting booed and heckled wherever he shows his face, and his minders are keeping him away from as many interviews and debates as possible because they're all to aware that he's shockingly unprepared, utterly ignorant of stuff like facts and details, liable to make up absolute nonsense on the spot, or to just start spouting blatant lies.

Then there's the fact that most of the far-right Brextremist mob Johnson has surrounded himself with are freakishly unpopular with the public. 

Michael Gove with his coked-up, plastic-faced, right-wing goit act.

Sajid Javid, the reckless junk bond trader that Johnson has somehow decided to put in charge of the entire UK economy.

The haunted pencil figure of Jacob Rees-Mogg, like Lord Snooty but always with the sinister whiff of fascism about him.

Liz Truss, who is perpetually on the verge of another weird rant about imported cheese, or using barking dogs to scare away drones.

Priti Patel with her perpetual smirk, her open contempt for ordinary working Brits, and her liability to go off and collude with foreign governments again.

And then the absolute chancers who have been promoted exponentially above their abilities like Dominic Raab ('where's Dover?') and Gavin Williamson ('Russia should just shut up and go away!').

Rory Stewart was one of the very few sympathetic and relatable figures in the Tory ranks (to 'centrist dad' types at least), but he's been driven out of the party altogether because he wouldn't do as he was told, and Johnson simply can't bear to have anyone in the party who clearly has infinitely more eloquence and charisma than he does.

Amber Rudd was Theresa May's reliable and ever-willing dogsbody, always willing to step up when things got difficult, or take the fall for May's racist Windrush scandal, but she's quitting too, standing down from parliament in disgust at how awful the Tory party has become.

There's basically nobody left in the Tory ranks with any talent whatever, and of those actually capable of stringing a few sentences together without making an absolute tit of themselves, Coffey is the most human-looking specimen they've got!

And that's why a a slow-witted slob that virtually nobody has even heard of before has ended up fronting this Tory general election campaign!

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