Welcome to Declassified, a weekly column looking at the lighter side of politics.
None of us wants to be the, er, face of sexually transmitted infections (at least not without being given a substantial amount of money or soothing balm).
Yet that’s what appears to have happened to British Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt whose image, as revealed by right-wing blog Guido Fawkes, is being used to tell people in Normandy to get tested for human papillomavirus (HPV), the most common sexually transmitted infection.
At the time of going to press, Mordaunt — a Royal Navy volunteer who was once dared to give a smutty speech in the House of Commons in which she said “cock” a lot — hadn’t commented on her new-found fame among STI sufferers in northern France and it was either a case of “when choosing a stock image goes wrong” or she thought no one would notice (like those Japanese advertisements featuring Hollywood stars).
The former has happened before, notably when a photo of former U.K. Labour leader Ed Miliband blowing his nose was used by NBC News to illustrate the dangers of seasonal flu.
It’s unlikely there have been many cases of mistaken identity involving Viktor Orbán. The Hungarian prime minister and rhinoceros godfather posted a photo of himself on social media with a needle in his arm at the weekend, along with a picture of a package of the coronavirus vaccine made by Chinese manufacturer Sinopharm (which has not been approved by the European Medicines Agency).
“I’m vaccinated,” Jean-Claude Juncker’s favorite “dictator” declared.
That Sinopharm shot is clearly strong stuff because just a couple of days later, Orbán announced that he was pulling the MEPs from his Fidesz party from the biggest group in the European Parliament, the center-right European People’s Party, moments after the EPP adopted rules allowing the expulsion or suspension of a party from its ranks.
Orbán, of course, is famous for defending his European lawmakers, as you’ll remember from late last year when Hungarian MEP József Szájer was caught pants-down at a lockdown-busting gay sex party in the center of Brussels. Drainpipe enthusiast Szájer co-founded Fidesz with Orbán and others in the late 1980s and was effectively the prime minister’s man in Brussels but was dropped faster than you can say “rule-of-law violation.” The two men do, however, still have something in common: unceremoniously leaving parties!
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“A busy day of auditions for the French version of Prison Break.”
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Last week we gave you this photo:
Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best from our postbag (there’s no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze).
“We don’t need PPE, we have herd immunity,” by Peter Wareing
Paul Dallison is POLITICO‘s slot news editor.
