Boris Johnson falls victim to Grant Shapps’ photoshop fail

It seems that Grant Shapps’ day has just gone from bad to worse. Having cursed the Virgin Orbit mission by declaring that ‘tonight all eyes are on the United Kingdom’ an hour before, er, it failed, the Business Secretary has become embroiled in a Twitter row about photoshop.

Shapps is, famously, a keen user of all things tech-related. He exploited his Excel spreadsheet to help co-ordinate MPs trying to bring down the Truss government. He also became something of an unlikely TikTok star while at the Transport department, teaming up with Michael Portillo in a viral video to promote trains.

So it must be to his consternation then that one eagle-eyed Twitter user spotted how his account had tweeted out a picture of the Virgin Orbit mission which removed former prime minister Boris Johnson. The airbrushing of Bozza from the image that Shapps used has prompted tongue-in-cheek comparisons with the propaganda efforts of Stalin’s Russia, in which onetime grandees were purged from images after losing favour with the all-powerful party leader.