I’m sure Boris Johnson finds hiring Nadine Dorries as culture secretary amusing – but I’m not laughing

Evidence of her love and sympathy for the arts, which is incidentally worth billions of pounds to the UK economy every year, seems scant, writes Katy Brand

Dorries outside Downing Street this week (Reuters)

When I was at school we were allowed to elect a student representative who would attend higher-level staff meetings and fight for our rights. We had some triumphs (a greater range of milkshakes in the canteen) and some setbacks (the petition to have a McDonald’s open opposite the school was ultimately unsuccessful).

One year we thought we’d be terribly clever and cynical about this set up. I don’t know why – perhaps we had become complacent as we indulged in the full range of flavoured dairy drinks on offer. But whatever the reason, we thought it would be funny to put someone wholly unsuitable in place.

We decided it would really show the staff our contempt for their sorry little system to choose someone who patently couldn’t give a toss. We knew who to go for – let’s call him Lucas, a 15-year-old boy whose defining moment thus far had been taking speed in the toilets on sports day and then winning all the races to such an extent that suspicion was aroused, and he was later suspended.

Lucas had a pleasingly anarchic quality to him, he was naturally anti-authority and was up for the joke, so we nominated and duly elected him, almost unanimously. A great cheer went up. That would show them… us… them… whatever, the point was it was hilarious seeing the look on our teacher’s face when she realised what had happened.

Needless to say, Lucas didn’t turn up for one single council meeting. In fact, shortly after the election he was suspended again for setting off the fire alarm for five consecutive days, prompting a full school evacuation every time. There was no reason for him to do it other than the sheer pleasure it gave him to disrupt everything.

On day five he was busted in the act by the caretaker and ran out of the school, leapt over the fence and disappeared, hotly pursued by a PE teacher. I never saw him again. Years later I heard that he had been thrown out of the navy and I marvelled because I didn’t even think that was possible. We went unrepresented for that whole year. We lost more than we gained. It was a laugh in the moment, but the last laugh was on us.

And so to Boris Johnson, who this week finally carried out his much trailed reshuffle. After the long tease he built the theatre of it, the drama, the sheer entertainment. And it seems for principally this reason we have ended up with Nadine Dorries as our secretary of state for culture, media and sport. Her appointment was apparently a bit of wheeze for Johnson, for as The Times pointed out, it was made with a “sense of mischief”.

Even when Dorries herself was on her way in to No 10 she seemed unaware of what was about to be bestowed upon her. She shrugged, as baffled as anyone, laughing and joking – it’s all a bit of a laugh, this. Some claim that her status as a best-selling author and star of ITV’s I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! qualify her for the job. And perhaps they do – after all, if we consider how much Johnson loves flattery, along with his tendency to stick his head in the sand, perhaps the experience of eating ostrich a***hole on that show well qualifies her to work alongside him.

Other than that, evidence of her love and sympathy for the arts, which is incidentally worth £100bn to the UK economy every year, seems scant. Judging by her past statements on Twitter and elsewhere, it seems to me that she is interested in stirring up pointless arguments, but I can’t see much evidence of her supporting a thriving and inclusive cultural environment.

Indeed, it has been reported that she is particularly excited about the culture war element of her new brief. She has been quick to criticise anyone who she feels is too “woke” and a “snowflake”. It seems she is of the view that people who work in the arts need shaking up a bit. And Johnson is no doubt happy with the response – if he wanted to annoy the so called liberal metropolitan elite, he has achieved it.

“You should have seen the look on the teacher’s face,” he may have thought to himself. They weren’t expecting that, tee-hee. And yes, it’s all very funny I’m sure. Until they set off the fire alarm for a laugh and run off into the woods, and suddenly you find perhaps the status quo is more fragile than you had imagined, and that the choice of representation is more important than you thought.

Sometimes it’s good to learn that lesson earlier rather than later.