Betrayal, violence and porn instead of a tractor-related site: British politicians involved in sex scandals

Dirty Tories

British media this week reported the arrest of an unnamed Conservative MP. The politician is accused of rape and other acts of violence of a sexual nature. It is known that the man is over 50 years old. According to The Independent, he was allegedly asked to refrain from visiting parliament during the investigation.

Representatives of Boris Johnson have already indicated that the prime minister is shocked by what has happened and that the Conservatives are ready to expel the man from the party if the allegations are confirmed.

The incident came less than a month after another Conservative MP was caught watching porn in the House of Commons. The complaint came from angry and offended women. Later, 65-year-old Neil Parish tried to justify himself: he came to the site by chance, confusing intimate content with a portal about tractors.

Eventually, the politician resigned from the Labor Party under pressure from dissidents. Repentance did not save Parish’s reputation – in the local press, the derogatory nickname “porno-Tory” was already attached to him.

The extent of the problem can be seen in a recent study from The Sunday Times. Journalists found that more than 50 parliamentarians, including three ministers, faced sexual harassment allegations by the parliamentary oversight body in late April.

The impetus for the internal investigation was the case of another Conservative lawmaker, Imran Ahmad Khan, who resigned in late April after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008. The fact that Khan was part of an advisory group investigating sexual exploitation of minors only reinforced the excitement surrounding the scandal.

Boris Johnson barely managed to survive the sex scandal. In 2019, it became publicly known that the politician was in a relationship with American businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri during the time he was mayor of London. Johnson, who was married at the time of his affair with Arcuri, was suspected of providing illegal financial aid to his mistress’s business and of possible embezzlement of the British capital’s budget.

Although the investigation failed to prove his guilt, the public enjoyed the details of the prime minister’s private life for a long time.

British newspapers paid special attention to Arcuri’s memoirs, which easily revealed intimate details of his relationship with the politician.

Naturally, a series of sex scandals could not but affect the public image and ratings of the British Conservatives.

conservative approach

Every sex scandal is costly for conservatives, so they do their best to keep the so-called sexual abuse out of the public eye. However, his Labor opponents rarely miss an opportunity to attack the wrongdoing Conservatives.

In the case of Neil Parish and her viewing of ‘unintentional’ porn in Parliament, Labor was quick to accuse the Conservatives of trying to cover up the scandal by pointing out the Ahmed Khan case to her colleagues. Then the Conservatives were in no rush to launch an investigation and make the details of the incident public.

In recent years the British Conservative Party has faced some difficulties, especially in the parliamentary elections of June 2017, so the loss of every seat in their power structures is still painfully perceived.

Indicative in this context is the scandal that occurred in November 2017, when conservative Michael Fallon, the country’s defense minister, resigned after accusing a journalist of sexual harassment. In the early 2000s, Fallon had the imprudence to put his hand on a woman’s knee, which later turned into a career collapse for him. The scandal happened at the height of the #MeToo movement.

In the same month, several more politicians from the ranks of the conservatives fell under the “strike”. The first cabinet minister, Damian Green, was convicted of using a dating site for married men and keeping porn on his work computer. Greene later resigned under pressure from Prime Minister Theresa May.

Green’s colleague at the Treasury at the time, Christopher Pincher, also resigned after accusations of abusing his young assistant.

A string of sex scandals in 2017 further narrowed the gap between the Conservatives and the Labor Party in parliament. The next British Parliament elections will be held in two years and new sex scandals are only gaining momentum.

Extreme British Scandal

The public history of sex scandals in British politics goes back to the 1960s. One of the most high-profile “incidents” is considered to be the so-called “Profumo Case”.

Later in 1963, British War Minister and Conservative Party member John Profumo was accused of having sexual relations with 19-year-old model Christine Keeler. Profumo was married at the time, but the scandal didn’t just break out because of the moral side of the matter.

In addition to Profumo, assistant to the naval attaché of the USSR Embassy in England, Yevgeny Ivanov was in a relationship with the girl. As a result, Profumo’s career was ruined and the Conservative Party’s loss in the 1964 parliamentary election.

In 1973, the tabloid News of the World published photos of Lord Anthony Lambton (another Conservative), a Ministry of Defense official, smoking marijuana in bed with two prostitutes. The resulting scandal forced Lambton to resign from his position as Deputy Parliamentary Secretary of the Royal Air Force.

Another well-known scandal occurred in 1976 when the British public learned that the then Liberal Party leader and the country’s prime ministerial candidate, Jeremy Thorpe, had ordered the murder of the politician’s lover, who threatened to publicly reveal his gay preferences. The court later acquitted Thorpe, but his career was ruined. In 2018, the story was filmed in the TV series An Extremely English Scandal.