Like a turd that won't flush, Restore Trust are back, trying to foist their preferred candidates - "the usual mix of libertarians, cranks and arseholes", in the words of Stewart Lee - on the National Trust Council. Among them this time around are retired Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption (a veritable man of the people, no doubt) and Andrew Gimson, who in his candidacy statement bemoans how the Trust is succumbing to "modish nonsense" while crowbarring in the fact that his great-great-uncle built the Trust-managed property Stoneywell in Leicestershire and that he's written "two volumes ... of brief lives of our monarchs since 1066 and prime ministers since 1721", as if any of that matters.
Lee points out that fundamentalist nutjob Stephen Green had Restore Trust's backing last year, and the Christian Voice leader is on the list again, fulminating about how the Trust should end "its current fixation with 'woke' causes" and stop "the waste, the cronyism and the elitism". Fine words, coming from someone formerly endorsed by a shady organisation run out of Tufton Street, a hub for right-wing politics and climate denial, for which cronyism seems to be second nature.
The National Trust doesn't get everything right - it could do more on the accessibility front, and the decolonising initiatives seem to have been pursued more enthusiastically at some properties than at others (I'm still looking at you, Kedleston Hall). But the Trust is a force for good and a national treasure in its own right - one that needs to be kept out of the clutches of these horrible Rees-Mogg-endorsed ghouls.
If you're a member, join me in voting to give Restore Trust another bloody nose.
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