The weirdest political moments of 2023: from f*** pigs to terrorist squirrels and Elon Musk

Whether it was listening to a group of middle aged Tory MPs compare themselves to New York’s mafia families or Rishi Sunak talking to Elon Musk about how AI is the only friend anyone will need, the last year has been an odd one. So let’s take a look back at the weird, wacky and bizarre moments from politics over the last 12 months.

‘F*** pigs’

I spent a lot of 2023 watching the Covid Inquiry as a series of politicians, civil servants and political advisers revealed the chaos and disfunction inside Boris Johnson's government at the heart of the pandemic. And as we mostly (more on that later) had access to WhatsApp messages from the time, we had contemporaneous and honest accounts of Johnson's disastrous reign.

Right at the centre of this was erratic political guru Dominic Cummings, who once famously drove 30 minutes with his child in the back of his car to test his eyesight, with language would make most people's eyes water. His messages revealed he called Matt Hancock a "c***" and a "proven liar", while his insults for the rest of the Cabinet got even odder.

In a WhatsApp message in August 2020, he said: “At the moment the bubble thinks you've taken your eye off ball, you’re happy to have useless f*** pigs in charge, and they think that a vast amount of the chaotic news on the front pages is coming from no10 when in fact it’s coming from the Cabinet who are feral."

Elon Musk interview

At the start of 2023, I did not have Prime Minister of UK carries out fawning interview with world's richest man on my bingo card - but there we go. At the end of his AI Safety Summit, Rishi Sunak asked Elon Musk a series of softball questions, which ranged from the sycophantic to the bizarre.

Tangents included Musk warning of humanoid robots that “can chase you anywhere” and going off on a long monologue about how AI will be a great friend for people. He said that “there will come a point where no job is needed”, and the pair discussed James Cameron's film series Terminator.

Every now and then Sunak would make a slightly sycophantic comment like “you work a lot of hours”  - perhaps forgetting how Musk turned Twitter HQ into a hotel for staff with beds so they never have to leave. No journalists were allowed to ask questions during the Q&A, and many left the event scratching their heads with experienced Sky News deputy political editor Sam Coates saying it was “one of the maddest events” he’s ever covered.

'Hamas' grey squirrels

In a debate about the decline of red squirrels, DUP MP Jim Shannon came up with one of the most bizarre comments ever uttered in Westminster. Talking about animal volunteer groups, he said: "Grey squirrels are the Hamas of the squirrel world." This was in the midst of war in Gaza, after Hamas had carried out their bloody terrorist attack on Israel killing around 1,500 Israelis and taking hundreds more hostage. Grey squirrels are on the IUCN's international list of 100 worst invasive species as they cause damage to Britain's flora and fauna, however Shannon's description maybe went slightly too far.

Nadine Dorries and The Plot

I spent much of 2023 writing about former Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, firstly her failure to represent her constituents and then her long resignation from Parliament. It all got a bit weirder after Dorries quit as an MP and released her book The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson - which claims a shady cabal of political advisers brought down Johnson to install Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister. Remember actually Liz Truss replaced Johnson, and he was force to resign after partygate and the Chris Pincher scandal - which was all of his own making.

In her book, Dorries claims a shady fixer has been operating in Downing Street for years, who she only refers to as Dr No. There is no confirmation on who Dr No is (presumably for legal reasons) but she claims he has has been employed at the top of the Conservative Party since the 1990s, with full access to No10.

In one of the more lurid sections of The Plot, Dorries alleges that when an ex-girlfriend ended their relationship Dr No chopped up her little brother’s pet rabbit and nailed it to the family’s front door. She wrote: “When a girlfriend ended their relationship, it is rumoured that he had her little brother’s pet rabbit chopped into four and nailed to the front door of the family home to greet him when he got home from school, in true Mafia style.”

Since publishing the book, Dorries has claimed any political news in Westminster is being orchestrated by this mysterious group including Dr No and Michael Gove.

WhatsApp excuses

You would think backing up a mobile phone would be pretty easy to do, particularly if you were the Prime Minister or Chancellor and it had time incredibly important messages on it. But no, both former PM Boris Johnson and current PM Rishi Sunak told the Covid Inquiry that they were unable to access any WhatsApp messages from the first part of the pandemic (when all the important decisions were made). And the explanations are slightly hard to believe.

Johnson said: "It looks as though it's something to do with the app going down and then, um, coming up again. But, somehow, automatically, um, erasing all the things between that date when it down and when it was last backed up." Righty-ho.

And then more recently, Sunak said: "I have changed phone multiple times in the years since then, and as I've said previously every time that's happened the messages wouldn't have come across. As I said I'm not a prolific user of WhatsApp."

This is the man who set up an AI Safety Summit, interviewed Elon Musk and wants to work in Silicon Valley after his political career, claiming he doesn't understand how to back up his phone. Sure.

‘Five families’

We've had the weirdest political stories of the year, but this is definitely the most ridiculous. In the build up to the vote on Rishi Sunak's emergency legislation on Rwanda, right-wing Tory MPs spent a lot of time posturing and threatening to vote down the bill. Meetings were organised in the most public parts of Westminster before the various factions held press conferences to the gaggle of journalists waiting outside.

And it was an armada of acronyms that journalists had to keep with, such as Mark Francois of the European Research Group (ERG), Suella Braverman and John Hayes of the Common Sense Group (CSG), Danny Kruger from the New Conservatives (thankfully acronym free for the moment), Jake Berry from the Northern Research Group (NRG) and Simon Clarke from the Conservative Growth Group (CCG). Got all that?

Instead of writing ERG, NRG, CSG and CCG over and over again, someone started referring to the right-wing Tories as the "five families", copying the name given to the New York mafia. The acronyms had to be shortened, but Mark Francois did look slightly ridiculous referring to himself as one of the five families before going on to abstain from voting on the Rwanda Bill. I'm not sure the New York mafia would have done that ...

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.