Grant Shapps reveals why he airbrushed Boris Johnson out of a photo

Grant Shapps has apologised after “inadvertently” airbrushing Boris Johnson out of a photo on social media.

The Business Secretary was accused of removing the ex-prime minister from a snap with the Virgin Orbit aircraft taken back in June 2022, and posted again ahead of its launch from Cornwall.

In the now-deleted tweet, Shapps wrote: “The UK Govt is delighted to be backing the FIRST ever satellite launch on European soil. Lift-off scheduled on Monday at Spaceport Cornwall, Newquay.”

However, there were actually four people in the original image – rather than the three in the former transport secretary’s version – and the post was later taken down.

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Now, Shapps has spoken about the embarrassing incident by jokingly claiming that he told his team to ‘hairbrush’ Johnson, not ‘airbrush’.

“I think it’s fitting if I start with the apology. I saw that I inadvertently airbrushed him out of a picture on Twitter last week,” Shapps said while speaking in the Commons.

“I think my team were confused. I simply told the team he needs ‘hair brushing’, not ‘air brushing. No-one did more to progress space as [Johnson] as prime minister and although that launch wasn’t successful last week, it is the start of a very important new sector in this country.”

The minister added: “On his point about small modular reactors he is absolutely right, we will be announcing the creation of Great British Nuclear very shortly and small modular reactors, Rolls-Royce and the others, play an amazingly important part in this nuclear mix which will get back us up to 25% of our power from nuclear.”

Johnson can be seen laughing in the benches behind Shapps in a video posted to social media.

The Virgin Orbit launch was intended to be a demonstration of the UK’s plan to be a space nation of the future, launching unprecedented rockets and satellites into orbit. However, last week’s launch attempt ended in failure after suffering an “anomaly” during the flight.

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