Mental health ‘should not be a weapon’: Tory MP Jonathan Gullis on self-harm and being hated by the left

“There’s been an hour on a phone-in show dedicated to ‘What’s wrong with Jonathan Gullis’. My mum probably called in.”

He insists he didn’t set out to become a ‘wind-up merchant’ but the MP for Stoke on Trent North has become the Tory that many of the left love to hate.

As well as the phone-in shows there are internet lists of his most controversial statements, including calling for migrants to be housed in tents and calling his constituents ‘scrotes’.

Gullis’s bogeyman status was cemented last month when Gary Lineker forced a retraction after the MP accused the football pundit of believing northern voters were “racist bigots”.

And yet the 33-year-old former union rep talks movingly of being bullied and episodes of self-harm, the most recent just four years ago, his liking of Sir Keir Starmer and love of teaching.

In a bid to get to the real Jonathan Gullis, I went to meet him at the Foaming Quart pub in Norton Green where his Potteries patch opens out into the countryside.

Even the venue is a contradiction since Gullis is teetotal but over pints of lemonade he tries to correct the ‘absolute caricature’ presented by shock jocks and internet trolls.

His mum is a life-long Conservative, his step-father has ‘Lib Dem tendencies’ and somewhere among this disputatious family tree there’s an Irish nationalist MP.

“I’ve come from a very opinionated household of very differing political outlooks. If we wanted to watch Blue Peter we had to watch Newsround first,” he said of his upbringing in Stratford.

His parents insisted that he wait until he was an adult before joining a party: he signed up to the Conservatives on his 18th birthday. “Tragic, I thought I was like a footballer signing his first professional contract.”

He was the first in his family to go to private school and credits grammar schools for giving his mother a route out of her London council estate. But while inspired by his politics teacher – ironically also a Labour politician – it’s clear that Princethorpe College, near Rugby, wasn’t all happy.

In 2020 he gave an interview to the Stoke Sentinel, his local paper, in which he said there were times he “absolutely despised” going to school. “Other days I was crying and self-harming. I used to cut myself and hide it from my parents and keep it hidden when I played rugby.”

He says he shared his experiences of depression, including suicidal thoughts, to destigmatise mental ill-health stressing that although his parents were separated he was “bought up in love” and had “every advantage of life”.

The last time he self-harmed was in September 2019, after he had been selected as a parliamentary candidate but while he was still teaching. He was angry at himself, he says.

Now a father of two, Gullis says he manages his health with the help of a therapist, sometimes consulting them online from his Commons office.

He was shocked at the abuse he received online after his disclosure and has since deleted his Twitter account. “I think there should be some things that are not weapons, being open about someone’s health, mental health, physical disabilities or learning disabilities and all that should be off the table.”

Despite -or perhaps because of – his own experiences at school, Gullis became a teacher after university. He has said he learned to play a role but denies that his unsmiling persona as ‘Grumpy Gullis’ meant that he disliked the profession. “I love teaching, but it’s tough.”

It wasn’t until he came to Stoke, he says, that he really found his calling. He revels in a self-image of being a “scrappy fighter” for a town that has been done down.

“I don’t think I am controversial. I believe all I’m saying is what is said to me in surgeries or down here in the pub which mirror my own view. That’s why I wanted this seat and fought so hard for it because I felt like I actually belong somewhere for the first time in my life and fitted in.”

When he calls local drug dealers “scrotes, scumbags and savages” he says he’s doing more than using the language of his constituents. And it’s their anger at the town being used as a “dumping ground” for migrants he says he is voicing when he campaigns for tougher action on small boats crossing the Channel and other illegal immigration.

Challenged over how many Tory MPs seem to want migrants to be detained to discourage people trafficking but none want them held in their constituency, he says it’s time for some “painful decisions”. “I get that they’ve got to argue for their constituencies. Well, I think there’s also a degree that we are in a national emergency and it’s going to require some uncomfortable conversations and some painful decisions.

Although a supporter of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss he praises Rishi Sunak for restoring “calmness” and says voters “unimpressed” at last year’s ructions won’t tolerate another bout of “melodrama” from his party.

With a majority of 6,286, Gullis is far from safe at the next election but insists that he is relishing the fight against his Labour opponent, a local councilor David Williams, and says Stoke will be at the heart of the battle for Number 10 next year.

“I said to Keir as we were walking down the corridor the other day, ‘You know I’m going to make your candidate’s life a living hell don’t you?’ He said: ‘I’d expect nothing less from you Jonathan.’”

He says he “quite likes” the Labour leader. “I’ve always found him to be personable. I thought he could take a joke and I don’t think he’s a bad person. I just don’t think he’s got the right ideas. The reason why you rightly say I get under the skin of the left is because I don’t feel scared to point out Labour’s record of failure.”

In four years Gullis has achieved a higher profile than most Tory MPs manage in a whole career but it’s a mixed blessing. He is emblematic of modern politics – only ever one stray remark away from a Twitter pile-on or another You Tube clip for the haters.

Asked about his previous bust-ups time and again he acknowledges that he should have chosen his words more carefully to avoid being taken out of context.

His next venture is a new podcast, launching later this month with fellow Vote Leave veteran James Starkie called Inside Whitehall will at least allow him control over what he communicates. It will be interesting to see if the real Gullis finally emerges from the cartoon caricature.

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