ERIC JOYCE, the disgraced MP for Falkirk, who was recently found guilty of headbutting a Conservative MP during a fight in a bar in the House of Commons, has admitted that if he does not address his problems with alcohol and violence he will “die or go to jail”.
In his first interview since the incident in the Strangers’ bar last month, the Labour MP, 51, said he had drunk a bottle of wine before he started arguing with a group of Tory MPs. He became irritated when some of the “yahs” asked one of his friends to shut up, and decided to “physically stop them being in my face”. “I saw red,” he said. He was convicted on four counts of assault, given a fine of £3,000 and ordered to do 12 months’ community service.
He also revealed that he had a long history of violent attacks. At 15 he was convicted of assault and breach of the peace for attacking one of his teachers, and was also found guilty of stealing cars on several occasions. He was acquitted of actual bodily harm while in the army, and was banned from driving in 2010 after he refused a breath test.
He claimed that leaving the army for politics in 2000 made his behaviour worse. He was devastated when he was passed over for a ministerial post by Tony Blair in 2005. “I felt 100% sure I would be a minister,” he said, but he found out the party thought he was “a liability” after an alcohol-fuelled exchange with a journalist in which he claimed he had killed people with his bare hands.
This led to a crisis of confidence in which he said he “went through a phase of thinking, I’ve been pointlessly cast aside”.
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In 2006 he split from Rosemary, his wife of 11 years, and started to drink more. He took risks at Westminster, as if he had “no limitations, no rules. I didn’t feel bound by any set of rules at all”, he said.
On Christmas Day 2007 he assaulted two men and was worried they had been seriously injured, but they did not go to the police.
He also had one-night stands, and is alleged to have had an affair with Meg Lauder, a then 17-year-old student who helped out with his election campaign in 2010. Joyce denies her claims, but admits he was alone with her twice in his flat. “It was bad judgment on my part,” he said.
He now hopes that the attack in the Strangers’ bar will be the last in a long line of errors that have ended his political career, and that he will have an opportunity to “tackle the underlying issues and get real”. He will step down at the next election.