Let’s blame it on the ties. The Speaker wants a return to formal attire in the Commons chamber. Not quite top hats but neckwear. Sir Lindsay Hoyle appears to believe that behaviour will improve if MPs look smart. Honestly? He thinks a piece of silk will stop this lot misbehaving; they’re more likely to tie themselves up. This has become the most lecherous, lying, abusive, bullying period in parliament in living memory but we barely notice it any more. Allegations of sexual assault, cocaine snorting and secret chat groups about rape culture rarely raise an eyebrow.
Last year the Tories vowed zero tolerance for sex pest MPs. Last week Crispin Blunt, the MP for Reigate, had the whip suspended after he was arrested on suspicion of rape and possession of controlled substances. He says he is confident he will not be charged. The previous week Peter Bone, another former minister, was suspended from the Commons for six weeks after he was accused of bullying and sexual misconduct against a member of staff. And don’t forget Chris Pincher, the former deputy chief whip, who was sacked after groping two men in a private members’ club because, he says, “I drank far too much”. Cleo Watson, Boris Johnson’s former No 10 aide who has written the latest political bonkbuster, Whips, calls Westminster “an iceberg of sex”.
Then there have been the power-mad and entitled cabinet ministers: Dominic Raab, the former deputy prime minister, stood down after an investigation upheld complaints that he had bullied civil servants. The former education secretary Gavin Williamson also resigned over accusations of aggression and is now undergoing “behavioural training”. And it will be hard to forget Matt Hancock breaking his own lockdown rules with his handsy embrace. Even the former Speaker John Bercow was found to be a “serial bully”.
Labour MPs aren’t saints. Keith Vaz, the former MP for Leicester East, is a particularly egregious case. He lied about his behaviour with two paid escorts while offering to procure cocaine and taking poppers with a third. This is a man who headed the home affairs select committee, chairing a report on prostitution and speaking out against banning poppers. Of course he did.
The Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme looked into the most serious cases against 17 MPs last year (2022-2023) of which six were sexual misconduct and 11 were bullying and harassment. Does this happen in your workplace to this extent? I suspect not, except perhaps if you work in the Met Police.
Advertisement
Too many MPs still see themselves as victims, working long thankless hours, which of course is all going to lead to hanky panky after dark. Some say MPs aren’t paid enough which is why the job attracts bad apples, but £86,584 with long holidays, subsidised food and drink, and the ability to earn extra on the side is hardly peanuts. Baroness Jenkin of Kennington, a co-founder of Women2Win which encourages Tory women to stand for office, calls it a “toxic, egocentric mix of stress, booze, testosterone, and power”. House of Commons cleaners say they are sick of clearing up the vomit and condoms.
Being an MP can be tough. Many face abuse and death threats. Some resort to wearing stab vests. They must split their time between constituencies and Westminster. I do still admire the majority who care deeply about their responsibilities. But they have the honour of being our representatives; they are rule-makers, they can’t be rule-breakers. Interviewing the tractor-porn former Tory MP Neil Parish last week, I felt he had misbehaved less than some yet was one of the fastest to resign his seat. He sounded contrite; others are shameless.
This has been escalating for a decade. In 2014, the worst that happened was when the Tory minister Brooks Newmark sexted someone while in his paisley pyjamas, and resigned.
Sex itself is not the issue. MPs and even prime ministers have been having affairs for centuries, and it’s fine if it’s legal and consensual. When I was a political correspondent in the 1990s, the scandals thrown up by “back-to-basics” were about toe sucking, sex therapists and the occasional illegitimate child, not the office bullying and sexual abuse of today.
With a population of 68 million, we must be able to find better representatives. There’s time to act in the 50 seats where Tory MPs are standing down, and 14 with Labour vacancies. The Tories should revive the American-style open primaries they experimented with between 2010 and 2015. Then, in a small number of seats, Tory candidate selections were thrown open to anyone in the constituency who wanted to vote, not just the shrinking Conservative membership. This produced MPs of the calibre of Sarah Wollaston, Tom Tugendhat and Lucy Frazer: a GP, a soldier and a barrister who appear to have a more comprehensive skill set than many of their colleagues.
Advertisement
Such a system would encourage applicants who are less party and self-obsessed, more public service minded and with broader appeal. Sadly, the Tory hierarchy took fright all too soon at their apparent loss of control.
The current system was designed in an era of mass party membership, which in the case of the Tories has declined from three million in the mid-1950s to 172,000 now. The result has been candidates chosen by a tiny group of ageing activists often less interested in competence and more concerned that their future MP shares their prejudices. If Labour also had open primaries, it would dilute the union influence over their candidates. As the asbestos-ridden Westminster crumbles, the politicians need to stop fiddling with their ties and start fixing our democracy.
