Revealed: The Secret Tory is an ultra marathoner who runs to save under threat birds of prey
When Henry Morris outed himself as the man behind a Twitter parody which lampoons the Conservative Party a link to running seemed unlikely - we found one
When the man behind a satirical Twitter account outed himself at the end of May, it seemed unlikely to spawn much in the way of running content.
But it turned out Henry Morris, aka Conservative-lampooning account The Secret Tory, was also an ultra running fitness instructor.
The account, which has more than 200,000 followers and started life as a parody of MP Mark Francois, often bordered on the ridiculous – but that hadn’t stopped many pundits speculating it was run by a disaffected Conservative MP or a Westminster insider.
When its creator revealed himself a mini-media whirlwind followed, including a BBC story topping its website’s most read list and GB News presenters lining up to take pot-shots at Morris’ mullet.
But behind the headlines, Running Tales has discovered a man who ran 250km in an attempt to save under threat birds of prey and who says running has changed his life.
This is the story of ‘the not-so-secret ultra runner,’ Henry Morris.
Running for raptors
Henry’s “last, big long run” was a pre-Secret Tory, pre-lockdown 250km (155 miles) effort across large parts of Yorkshire.
Running under the banner of broadcaster and environmentalist Chris Packham’s Wild Justice charity, he ran from the Forest of Bowland across to the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to raise awareness of the plight of birds of prey and other mammals caused by driven grouse shooting.
Described in The Spectator as ‘screamingly elitist,’ this so-called sport involves the hunting of red grouse during a shooting season which runs from August 12 to December 10 each year.
In order to allow the numbers of grouse available to be hunted to be as high as possible, other predators are suppressed.
Henry said: “Driven grouse moors are places where posh people go to shoot red grouse for about £32,000 a day.
“To sustain the high densities of red grouse on those moorlands, you kill all the other animals there - all the competitive predators, so birds of prey, hen harriers, buzzards, red kites.
“They also kill the vermin as they call it - or as I like to call them ‘mammals’, like stoats, foxes and weasels.
“So you just create this perfect ground for nesting birds. It’s basically a killing field. They kill everything to protect the red grouse, and then people pay to come and kill them.”
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Gamekeepers working on the moors will also burn heather, allowing fresh shoots to come through which are ideal nutrition for the grouse.
Such activity has negative environmental effects, causing damage to peatland species and ecosystem health.
Critics, including Henry, say the practice destroys carbon sequestration, a process by which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and held in solid or liquid form.
However, some organisations point to benefits of grouse moors, including the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, which claims grouse moor carbon emissions are “proportionally well below the proportion of carbon that they store, compared to other peatland uses”.
The Trust also says grouse moors preserve heather-dominated moorland landscapes and provide refuge to many ground-nesting birds, but acknowledges the impact on birds of prey, including the golden eagle, peregrine and hen harrier.
The RSPCB also recognises that grouse moors form a home to many nesting birds and that driven grouse shooting creates jobs in often remote areas, but it insists the practice needs to be properly regulated – both in terms of the burning of vegetation and the control of wildlife.
The society says if such regulation is not brought in then it will “call for a ban on driven grouse shooting”.
And Government data also clearly shows there is a link between grouse moors and the threat of extinction to birds of prey or raptors, most notably the hen harrier.
Indeed, 72% of hen harriers which have been satellite tagged by conservationists have been shown to have died on driven grouse moors.
If all of this sounds overly complicated for a running newsletter, it is essential in understanding what drove Henry to undertake that 250km run.
His route took in all the known locations of hen harriers according to satellite data, and if there is any doubt regarding his own view of grouse moors his description of the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty as a “raptor black hole” removes it.
That run across Yorkshire is unlikely to be his last attempt to raise awareness of the issue, with his next endeavour set to use the backing of his new-found Twitter following.
“In Scotland, they have all these grouse moors as well. I think a fifth of Scotland’s land mass is grouse moors,” he said.
“They are equally desolate places for wildlife. Golden Eagles, these magnificent birds, are getting shot for posh people, so posh people can shoot a different type of bird.
“I’m going to run between the Golden Eagle satellite tags. It’s probably harder running over the Highlands. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do all the places as there are so many.
“That might be next year or the year after. Now I’ve got 200,000 people I can talk to, I’m hoping to generate quite a lot of attention for it.
“I’ve found every single person I’ve ever explained what happens on grouse moors to has gone a bit slack-jawed. You just don’t hear about it because it happens out of sight and out of mind.
“I want to stop that.”
Defeating the impossible
Running wasn’t always central to Henry’s life though. Up until his late 20s he “used to be into partying, and drink and drugs, and just going at it really hard”.
Realising he was overweight, he decided to go for a run.
“I barely managed a mile,” he said.
“I sat on my sofa after it feeling nauseous all afternoon. And then the next day, I thought either that’s what I’m going to be like or I have to do something about it.
“I managed to run an extra 100 metres and felt exactly the same, but I just kept going out and making myself do it.
“There was this route I had my eye on, which was about three-and-a-half miles. It just seemed impossible, but in four weeks I managed to drag myself around it, puffing and panting with snot running down my face.
“But I did it, and I thought, ‘I thought this was impossible, what can I do next?’.”
Three-and-a-half miles became five and then 10. Before too long, Henry was starting to think about marathons.
He told the Running Tales Podcast: “I had thought my first few runs were impossible, so maybe I could do a marathon.
“So I signed up for one. In the meantime, my brother was dabbling with ultras. He said ‘there’s an ultra near me, why don’t you come and do that if you are training for a marathon’.
“I did that race - the 33 mile Marlborough Downs Challenge. I dragged myself round in seven hours or something horrible, and lost interest in the marathon.”
More ultras followed – Henry has racked up 45 to date – including the Hardmoors 110 on Cleveland Way.
“I was reading blogs about it and thought ‘that definitely sounds impossible,’ he said.
“So I had a stab at it. That was about three years into my running. I signed up for it and managed 50 miles on the first go, pulling out at Saltburn about halfway around.
“I was like, ‘I’m going to have another go’ and did it again, got to Whitby, got to 72 miles, pulled out again. And then I'm still going to have another go at it because I got to 72 this time.
“And I did it again and did the full 110. Throughout all of it, I was framing it in my mind like I did for that first mile. I couldn’t get beyond that first mile, but I did it. Everything had seemed impossible beyond that and here I was running 110 miles.”
‘Everyone can run an ultra marathon’
By that point Henry was hooked: “I vividly remember how horrible the first one - the Marlborough Downs Challenge - was, but I guess I loved the feeling afterwards.
“We all do it. The race is horrible, we finish the race, feel great, say we’re never doing it again, sign up for the next one 12 hours or 12 days later depending on who you are.
“With the partying hard stuff, I was very good at staying up all night, going at it. And I just transferred that energy into running. It’s not a new story, people with addictive personalities sashaying from one thing into another.”
He said his running is spurred on by his love of the outdoors, of wildlife and of both his natural and man-made surroundings – “my dad’s an archeologist so I’ve got a good eye to see there’s a bronze barrow, there’s an old church” - along with the challenge of pushing himself to the limit covering long distances.
Running was never a sport he loved at school, something which has persuaded him anyone with the right mindset can complete an ultra marathon.
“I’ve trained so many people over the years and every single one of them has said it seems impossible, and everyone always does it if they are in the mindset to do it.
“Whether you come to me morbidly obese or lacking in self-confidence, everyone can do it. It may take some people longer to get there than others, but the body itself, if it is fully functioning, is capable of running an ultra marathon. It’s all in your mind and in your head.”
And he is convinced the power of long distance running can change people’s lives.
“Doing that first ultra marathon completely unlocked something in me,” he said.
“Ever since then, everything has been easier. I’ve run my own business, I’ve run a music festival with my wife, I’ve done a Twitter account which has 200,000 people following it.
“I don’t know if I would have tried to do any of those things without that ultra marathon which I previously thought was impossible.
“It’s just given me so much confidence. It’s changed my life.”
Life as The Secret Tory
Since revealing himself as the man behind The Secret Tory via a social media video featuring Jacob Rees-Mogg and Micheal Gove tracking down his alter-ego (with deadly consequences), it’s safe to say Henry Morris has been busy.
The arrival of a new baby in the Morris household was a welcome addition to “an extremely mad time”. Journalists going through his bins and asking his neighbours for information, less so.
“The reception for The Secret Tory has been largely great,” he said. “Everyone was saying ‘we didn’t think it was you,’ but then who did they think it was?”
Henry said the account came about during down time from his work as a personal trainer “who was sick of incompetent politicians as far as I could tell running the country in to the ground”.
It was originally set up “in between clients” as a parody of pro-Brexit, Conservative MP Mark Francois.
Called ‘Mark Ne Francois Pas’ it rapidly garnered tens of thousands of followers.
“I’ve always wanted to write, but I’ve always been doing other things,” Henry said. “I run a music festival and I’ve been a personal trainer. I run ultra marathons.
“I did a plague diary during lockdown in the style of Samuel Pepys in the style of Mark Francois. Off the back of that I got an agent and I thought I need to broaden this a bit.
“I became The Secret Tory so I could take pot shots at the whole set-up, rather than just one MP.”
His success even resulted in a book, ‘The Diary of a Secret Tory MP.’
Henry said although a lot of what he was writing was “obviously nonsense, a lot of things our politicians are saying is obviously nonsense.
“The lines of reality are getting increasingly blurred, and I think it says a lot about the state of things that large numbers of people thought I was a real MP blowing the whistle on my colleagues.”
As the account developed, Henry began to find it harder to strike a balance between being funny and making political points.
“In the first stage of it, everyone was being really flattering saying it was the funniest account. You get all these blue tick people following you,” he said.
“I won’t lie. It really flatters your ego. So, I thought ‘I’ll do jokes, people will say they like me, that’s a good deal’.
“But then, some of the people who said they like me were the people I was taking shots at.
“There’s a Chris Morris interview where he says ‘if you are telling jokes like a jester to the court and the court are laughing along with you, then you are just a jester’. What are you trying to achieve? You’re not doing your job properly.
“I was flattered people were laughing at me, but I was flattering these MPs by giving them attention, so they were happy to share it.”
The account became more focused, with Henry’s own voice more prevalent – something which has occasionally created its own challenges.
“My voice was coming out and saying things like ‘I really object to the way you dehumanise refugees and turn them into a political pawn so you can try and hang on to your seats because you know it plays with a certain group of the electorate’,” he said.
“I was saying ‘you are actually talking about real people who you turn into a big mass, a faceless enemy, when actually they have fled war zones or extreme situations and are just asking for help’.
“It’s hard to be funny doing that.
“People come to the account to be entertained and laugh, but also I want to get my message out there. You have to get that balance. Some days I get it right and some days I don’t.”
When he eventually unmasked himself, Henry expected to get replies from “three people saying ‘you’re not a Tory MP, I’m disappointed’ or ‘why have you been winding us up’.”
Instead, he was caught up in something of a media – and social media - storm, including receiving death threats on Twitter from accounts with a “weird name with loads of numbers behind it” and attacks from presenters on GB News.
He said: “I just thought I would piss a few people off and the rest would shrug their shoulders and move on, but instead - I think largely because I have tattoos and a mullet - people have got really curious.
“They don’t know people like me.
“Some people got really angry. There was this bit on GB News where three people that pretend to be comedians who have gone to watch their careers’ die look at the stories of yesterday together, and they were looking at my one.
“The best thing they could come up with was ‘this guy looks like he smells,’ which is a joke worthy of my four-year-old, and ‘he looks unemployed’ which I felt was really revealing about how they see the world and think about people.
“They were just really snootily looking down their noses and all they could come up with was stuff about my appearance. They had nothing substantive to say whatsoever.
“My favourite one was some bloke saying he does look like an MP, just one from a small Australian suburb.”
Henry doesn’t have any solid plans for the future of the Twitter account – although a second book, ‘The Diary of a Secret Royal’ has just gone on pre-order – but he insists it is a vehicle for good.
“I did an interview with The Guardian and the sub-editor had a really nice time pulling out a line I said - slightly out of context - saying my sole objective is to destroy the Tories.
“That’s not my sole objective. My sole objective is to try and make the world a better place.
“One of the things in the way of that at the moment is the Tories.
“But I never sat down and thought ‘what is my objective here’. I’m not that organised a person.
“It’s our duty to leave the planet a better place than we found it and at the moment we are doing the opposite. For my small part, I’ve found I have a voice and a platform now so I can talk to people about things that matter to me and use comedy and jokes to make the points I want to.”
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