Grant Shapps has sparked some reaction after he posted a photo of himself – standing next to a strange blur – visiting Spaceport Cornwall over the weekend.
Although the image was posted on Sunday, the day before the attempted first ever satellite launch from the UK, the photo itself was not from that same day – although the business secretary did not explain that in his caption.
Instead, he wrote: “The UK government is delighted to be backing the FIRST ever satellite launch from European soil. Lift-off scheduled Monday at Spaceport Cornwall, Newquay 🚀”
He then encouraged people to join Virgin Orbit’s livestream for watch the Start Me Up mission.
But, looking back at the company’s previous posts, we can see that the original photo comes from June 9, 2021, when Shapps was the transport secretary in then-prime minister Boris Johnson’s government.
In the original photo, Johnson is standing in the centre, right where there was a blur in Shapps’ recent image.
Shapps is also wearing a jacket which says “transport secretary” in it, a detail which was not edited out in the new post.
At some point on Tuesday morning though, Shapps deleted the post.
HuffPost UK has approached the BEIS department for comment.
When asked by journalists about the image, the prime minister’s spokesperson refused to comment.
One reporter compared it to “Stalinist revisionism”, in a reference to Leon Trotsky being airbrushed out of history under the Soviet Union.
It’s also worth noting that Shapps appeared to share another post from his visit with Johnson to Spaceport Cornwall last year, on June 9, 2021.
His caption then read: “We’re pleased to announce a joint UK/US Taskforce to help facilitate the reopening of transatlantic travel.”
He tagged both Johnson and POTUS, the US president Joe Biden.
Johnson was ousted from office back in July after a wave of MPs left his government, led primarily by current PM Rishi Sunak and former health secretary Sajid Javid.
Shapps then became a vocal supporter of Sunak’s campaign to get into No.10.
When Liz Truss was elected instead, Shapps was drafted in briefly as home secretary when Suella Braverman abruptly quit.
Truss then stood down after less than two months, Sunak was elected and Shapps was appointed in his current role as business, energy and industrial strategy secretary.
A Labour source told HuffPost UK: “The Tories might want to erase their own leaders – but the country is stuck with the consequences of their appalling record: a crashed economy, a broken health service, and an asylum system that doesn’t work.”