Liz Truss speech echoes Monty Python on newts
Liz Truss at yet another free ranging speech on the fringe of the Tory Conference in Manchester on Monday has complained that MPs are more interested in protecting newts than building houses. This was not (probably) an echo of the Monty Python scene(Holy Grail) where John Cleese claims he has been turned into a newt (he hadn’t).
Rather it’s a clear echo of Johnson’s newt travails
Boris Johnson’s attempt to have a 11×4m swimming pool built at his new Cotswold mansion faced issues with planning permission. The area was thought to be inhabited by great crested newts, a protected species.
When he was PM Johnson complained that newts were holding up house building schemes in a precursor to the Culture Wars.
Much of the media is bad at historical context so only a few reports of the Johnson Newt stand-off have mentioned former London Mayor Ken Livingstone.
Livingstone owned newts from an early age including the great crested variety before it was protected and is a noted expert on them
Johnson later capitulated and claimed he would create a Newtopia and Newt Motels as his mansion
https://www.politico.eu/article/boris-johnson-newts-ruin-swimming-pool/
However a survey found that understandably all great crested newts have fled the Johnson Estate. He can now have his pool provided as agreed with South Oxfordshire Council he plants some trees elsewhere on his land. The sort of compromise Johnson had no knowledge of while in Downing St.
Meanwhile as might be thought Truss’s newt speech was like all her others, much ado about nothing.
The search for the holy grail continues
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