A Tory Councillor Wore an Oscar Pistorius Girlfriend-Killing Costume to a Fancy Dress Party

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

You have to wonder about Conversative councillor candidates sometimes, don't you? You have to worry. Because these people look at David Cameron and go: Yes, this caricature of the Fat Controller written with a pink pen on an egg is the leader I believe in. They look at towering, shimmering temples to business around Canary Wharf and the City and go: Yes, this is what gets the blood pumping to my genitals: large sums of tax-free money. And they look at Halloween and fancy dress parties and go: I guess I'll dress up as convicted killer Oscar Pistorius. That'll have everyone in stitches. Blood-soaked vest and some pads around my knees to intimate amputation. I am a good person and not at all an idiot.

One Tory candidate, Gregg Peers, thought exactly that thing, the Daily Mail revealed. Yeah, you thought it was a joke that a Tory MP would dress as a killer, didn't you? You were wrong to think that. This is real and this is happening.

Here's a picture of Peers wearing a vest that I'm guessing he's drizzled either thinned-down ketchup or strawberry jam on, and I mean what has he got on his knees there—it's either sports binding or sanitary pads tucked in a severed sock, it's very hard to tell—and he's got a South African flag, and a fake gun, and a shit-eating grin, and he's printed out a little A4 that says "PISTORIOUS – LONDON 2012." Not only is the outfit in poor taste, it is also extremely shoddy and cheap. He has soccer socks on to disguise the fact he has legs. Just shitty all-around.

"Gregg Peers, who is standing for the Conservatives in a Cumbria County Council by-election two weeks before the general election, posted the fancy dress picture on his Facebook page," the paper said.

"Labour MPs said it was 'stomach churning' to see a prospective Tory councillor making light of a man who gunned down his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine's Day two years ago."

It's a glorious tradition, of dressing in appallingly bad taste for a fancy dress party, a glorious British tradition invented by Prince Harry. How can we really have a go at Gregg Peers when the man third-in-line to the throne once dressed as a Nazi at a fun costume party? Prince Harry's grandma's house got bombed by Nazis in the war, and he can still have a joke about it. Good on Prince Harry, really. Good on Prince Harry, Britain's Clown Prince.

But Gregg Peers isn't a prince: he's a man who looks like he was within the first 100 LAD Bible likes on Facebook and knows a lot about adding underlights to a Vauxhall Vectra. And here's the problem: he is a normal human, a normal human who deviates from normality in exactly two ways: i. he wants to be a Tory councillor ii. he is an Oscar Pistorius goofer.

Who—in ten or 20 years—who in British politics will not have a Gregg Peers-a-like photo of them doing something embarrassing posted on the internet? The year is 2045, and the newly elected Prime Minister has to make a solemn speech from a podium explaining why their Facebook profile picture in the year 2015 was them dressed as Jihadi John. Give Gregg Peers a break, the stupid idiot. Give him a break, for he is a glimpse of our future.

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