Politics

Tory MPs have been roasted with savage Barbie bus stop and tube posters

Tory MPs have been roasted with savage Barbie bus stop and tube posters
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Barbiemania is unstoppable.

Merch is flying, people won't stop playing the soundtrack, and the Greta Gerwig film has been a huge box office hit.

But now it has gone one step further and transcended pop culture to worm its way into the political realm - having influenced anti-Tory protesters, who have cast MPs as characters in the hit film and put posters of them around London bus stops and tubes.

The posters show big name ministers and MPs Suella Braverman, Rishi Sunak, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Robert Jenrick, Lee Anderson and Priti Patel, Kemi Badenoch, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Dominic Raab and doesn't cast them in a favourable light.

Instead, they show quotes from the politicians or short bios about their failures accompanied with the hashtag "#ThisBarbieIsAC*nt".

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Liz Truss's poster, for instance, claims she is "as useful as a condom". It adds: "Liz Truss holds the record for the shortest time served as PM. She crashed the economy trying to make her pals richer. While we're struggling to buy food and pay our bills, she's making tens and thousands as a public speaker.

"#thelettucewoulddoabetterjob".

Another poster calls another former PM, Johnson a "f**king eejit".

Pictures of the bus posters were uploaded to Twitter by the campaign group Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants.

The group, who posted the images on Twitter on the same day that Barbie was released in cinemas, wrote: “This week not only marks the cinematic event of the summer, but the Illegal Immigration Bill also passed a few days ago and it looks as though someone has been doing some alternative promo.”

They added: “This government’s treatment of migrants and asylum seekers is an outrage that violates human rights and fails to protect those fleeing from persecution and conflict. It will make life even more dangerous for people on the move.”

As for the tube posters, they wrote: "We may not all be barbie girls, but we do live in this Tory world. The UK government targets and scapegoats asylum seekers, migrants and trans people, and fabricates fear to distract us all from their farcical failure to serve the people."

They referenced Sunak's commitment to expand North Sea drilling today, which is controversial because of climate change, adding: "While Shell announces annual profits almost 10X their last, around one in five (20 percent) of our population live in poverty. Now just this morning the Tories have issued 100 new oil and gas licences. Make it make sense.

"We’re being rinsed, financially and politically, now and for generations to come. No mojo dojo case house vibes please, we’ve had Kenough".

But it looks like the poster campaign might be short-lived. When the bus stop posters appeared, Transport for London (TfL) spokeswoman told the Evening Standard: “These offensive adverts are not authorised by TfL or our advertising partner JCDecaux.

“We have instructed our contractors to remove any of these posters found on our network immediately.”

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