Mario Creatura, Theresa May’s former Twit-in-Chief in Downing Street, has been accused of publishing a litany of homophobic, sexist and racist views.
Nasty streak: Mario Creatura
The bulging file full of cuttings and clippings, some going back more than 10 years, demonstrate under-lying bigotry and sexism put on display on a frequent basis. The foolscap file which landed on the doormat here at Inside Croydon Towers carried the title: Mario Creatura and the Cauldron of Tory Prejudice.
The file was also passed to the national media, and its contents suggest that Creatura is a natural fit in the “Nasty Party”, where its leader, Bullshit Boris Johnson, casually bandies about homophobic and racist remarks without ever attempting to apologise.
Most of the offensive material that has emerged dates back to Creatura’s days as a student at Royal Holloway College, though some relates to comments made more recently on social media about travellers, published during his time as a Conservative councillor in Coulsdon.
Creatura is the Conservative candidate standing in tomorrow’s General Election in the marginal Croydon Central seat which was held by the Tories until Creatura’s former boss, Gavin Barwell, lost it to Labour’s Sarah Jones in 2017.
When at Royal Holloway, Creatura edited the student magazine The Orbital.
The highly offensive homophobic cover which Creatura had published when student magazine editor
In 2007, the author, JK Rowling, announced that one of the leading characters in her Harry Potter series of books, Professor Dumbledore, was gay. Student hack Creatura managed to magic up a front page of his magazine that conflated homosexuality with paedophilia.
Alongside a bad-taste headline and a couple of photographs was a picture caption that reads: “Professor Paedo: do Hermione, Harry and Ron have more to fear than just Voldermort?”
Astonishingly, Creatura managed to escape any sanction from his student union.
Although Creatura’s deputy editor quit in shame over the episode, and the magazine was the subject of two motions of censure at the student union, the prominent member of the Young Conservatives turned up for the meeting with a gang of mates who duly voted down the censure motion against their chum, and then promptly got up and walked out.
A fellow student at Royal Holloway at the time remembers the incident well.
Mario Creatura has been attracting critical headlines for his conduct since 2008
“I am disturbed by the idea of Mario Creatura taking a place in Parliament,” they said, on condition of anonymity.
“He published some vile homophobia in student journalism, and dodged censure while refusing to acknowledge wrong-doing.
“Mario never apologised. The student union raised a motion of censure against him. Mario arranged enough people to attend this meeting to vote down the motion – the entire group famously left the meeting after the vote.”
The shameful episode is still recalled at Royal Holloway, where the students’ newspaper The Founder reported the story at the time, and where Creatura’s current-day notoriety – such as Private Eye‘s coverage earlier this month – is a constant source of amusement.
The archives of The Founder includes in its report of the controversial students’ union meeting this reaction from one of Creatura’s fellow students: “I’m somewhat disappointed by what I have seen today. The Union has clearly closed ranks on the matter and a group of about 10 students who were sat with Mr Creatura voted in his favour and then left as soon as the votes were counted…
“Is it really a democracy when you can just bring your mates along to bail you out?”
As you might expect of someone of such limited talent who has nevertheless managed to rise to the dizzying heights of becoming an £80,000 per year special adviser in No 10 Downing Street, Creatura was an early-adopter of social media when at university.
The dossier of Creatura’s homophobia, sexism and racism includes a large collection of remarks he posted and which might have only been thought possible from Harry Enfield’s Tory Boy parody character, Tim Nice But Dim.
An unconfirmed picture of Creatura in his student days
Fellow students, women, were referred to by Creatura as “a bitch” or “a hotty”, and female train passengers as being “tarted up for a Saturday night out on the town”.
Even as a councillor in Croydon, since 2014, Creatura’s mask as the modern face of the Conservative Party has slipped on occasion, often when he reports incursions on to public property by groups of travellers, which he automatically links to thefts. The Tory Party’s manifesto suggests the criminalisation of gypsies and travellers’ way of life.
Today, after reading through the dossier of Creatura’s repeated and random bigotry, Naz Shah, Labour’s shadow spokesperson on women and equalities, said, “Mario Creatura’s appalling sexist and homophobic comments provide further evidence of the deep prejudice that runs through the Conservative Party, which is no surprise when its own leader Boris Johnson advocates sexual harassment, attacks single mothers like me, and compares gay marriage to marrying a dog, calls gay men ‘tank-topped bum boys’, and opposes gays in the military.
“The demonisation of gypsy and traveller communities by Conservative candidates is yet another episode in the long history of anti-traveller prejudice in their party.
“These comments, combined with the chilling Tory manifesto pledge to criminalise gypsy and traveller way of life, exposes the Conservatives’ contempt for minority and marginalised communities.”
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Gavin Barwell, the Lord of Grenfell, a Tolkein nerd and long-standing mentor to Mario Creatura, must be relieved that his great friend never managed to extend his literary depictions to his favourite character and role model Gollum.
He has gone far enough to show us what he really is like.
Much as I disrespect 90+% of all politicians, it seems like you can NEVER lose your past as to what you say or do even as a student. Almost the ONLY MP that I do have TOTAL respect for is the unique Dennis Skinner. I am reading his book “Sailing Close to the Wind”. I don’t believe there is one single word or action that can ever be held against him in 20 years as a miner and councillor and 50 years as a member of the “Palace of Varieties”. A true and rare man of his principles.
But then Skinner never thought he was cleverer than he was…
Creatura has had opportunities to deal with things from his past, by facing proper questioning. He never turned up for our virtual hustings.