THE “secret Tory MP” behind a book claiming to offer a glimpse into life at Westminster – and a Twitter account with almost 200,000 followers – has been revealed as not a Tory MP at all.

Instead, the person behind the satirical account is an environmental campaigner and personal trainer from Yorkshire called Henry Morris who now lives near Crymych.

The news was revealed on Wednesday morning on Twitter, and led to mixed reactions from its followers.

One said: “It's just, I knew on some level that no Tory MP would have a cracking sense of humour, a soul, empathy, or a moral backbone … maybe we just wanted it to be true…”

But others praised the long-running parody project. LBC host James O’Brien commented “magnificent” on a video revealing Morris’s identity.

“Exceptional!! Well done Mr Henry Morris,” a second wrote, while others said the reveal video had them “dying laughing”.

Western Telegraph:

Morris (above) told the BBC he was not sorry if anyone had been fooled into believing he really was a secret Tory MP.

"If people are feeling cheated I'm not a real MP, I'd like to say I'm sorry," he said. "But I'm not. It's got a lot more to do with the behaviour of the people sitting in Westminster, than my skills as a con artist."

He went on: "Other people discover they're good at things like ballet or darts. Turns out I'm very good at pretending to be a Tory MP.

"I have loved the wind-up, but I reckon it’s time to let people know who I really am. And anyway, I'm sure an AI will be able to do all this in a few weeks anyway."

The @secrettory12 Twitter account was started in April 2019, with a book called The Diary of a Secret Tory MP: (Almost!) True Stories from the Heart of British Politics released in late September 2022.

The opening paragraph of the book’s listing on Amazon, to which the Twitter account links, states: “From Brexit to Covid, parties to pig culling, the Conservative government has lurched from crisis to crisis.

"With a front-row seat on the, erm, backbenches, the Secret Tory MP has picked up on all the petty rivalries, bad decision-making and scandalous affairs that Whitehall has to offer. And he’s got no qualms about sharing it. All."

The second and third paragraphs suggest that the book is purely satirical. They say: “Join the mystery MP as he drunk-texts Liz Truss after a crate of WKD, accompanies Jacob Rees-Mogg (and his kids) to picket a foodbank, takes on the French in the ‘Trawler Wars’, and euthanises Rishi Sunak’s dog – and that’s just October.

“The Diary of a Secret Tory MP is an outrageous spoof of the classic political journal that pulls back the Lulu Lytle curtains to expose extraordinary goings-on at Westminster across a tumultuous twelve months.”

The video revealing Morris’s identity features parodies of Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg, among other Conservative figures.

Morris’s real Twitter account, which is locked, says he is “running 250km in the Cairngorms to highlight golden eagle persecution”.

This story was originally published in The National.