You Must Be Joking?

Shaun Ryder, formerly of the Happy Mondays, is to advise the Conservative party on class and help launch a T-shirt campaign.

On April 1, or April Fool’s day, The Observer reported UK leader David Cameron had called in Ryder as a special adviser on social class, following a series of political missteps since the budget.

A group of Tories reportedly feared that budget decisions to lower the 50p tax rate and raise VAT on hot takeaway food were in danger of re-toxifying the Tories as the “party of the rich.”

The paper quoted “a source close to Downing Street” saying that “discreet inquiries” established that Ryder was “not the committed Labour supporter that people might think he is.”

It quoted Ryder as saying: “People assume I’m a lefty because I’m working class and from Salford, but I’m not really. The Mondays were all children of Thatcher’s generation.

“It’s funny because it seems like everyone else is paying for an invite to No. 10 these days, and I’m the only one who is getting paid to go there.”