Crispin Blunt is the outspoken uncle of the actress Emily Blunt and has been in a series of parliamentary scrapes in recent years.
In a long and colourful career, the MP, 63, has slapped a parliamentary colleague on the Westminster Palace estate and outed himself as a sex drug user. He also controversially backed an MP who sexually assaulted a teenager.
On Thursday Blunt took the unusual step of revealing that he was the MP arrested by Surrey police on suspicion of rape and possession of illegal drugs. He said that the arrest was “unnecessary” because he is “ready to co-operate fully with the investigation that I am confident will end with no charge”.
His liberal attitudes, at odds with many on his party’s own benches, are a far cry from his upbringing. The son of a major general, he attended Wellington College and Sandhurst, before spending 11 years in the armed forces, serving in the Royal Hussars. He resigned his commission as a captain, and worked as a special adviser to Malcolm Rifkind, then defence secretary, winning a safe Tory seat at the second attempt, in Reigate, Surrey, in 1997.
As an MP, Blunt has fought for gay rights, a more liberal drugs policy and, most recently, he has been a rare Conservative voice backing the Palestinians, claiming that the UK could be complicit in war crimes if it does not do more to “restrain” Israel.
Advertisement
He came out as gay in 2010, ending a 20-year marriage to his wife, Victoria, mother to their two teenage children, to allow him to “come to terms with his homosexuality”.
The announcement almost ended his career as an MP as homophobic sentiment in his local association bubbled up. One senior member described it as a “totally unnecessary announcement that he was ‘gay’” and said it was the final straw.
However, he fought back and was backed by party leaders, and retained his job as a junior minister in the coalition government. No 10 was less impressed when his liberal attitudes spread into his work, notably with an announcement to relax rules governing prison parties. He lost his government job in the 2012 reshuffle.
Life on the backbenches allowed him to turn to pet campaigns. As chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for drug policy reform, he has called for cannabis, a Class B drug, to be legalised. He said that “the law as it stands has the unintended consequence that many thousands of people seeking cannabis for medical use have little choice but to acquire it illegally”.
He became the first MP to “out myself as a poppers user” in a debate on drugs, arguing that they should be exempt from prohibition to prevent gay men turning to riskier sex drugs.
Advertisement
In a parliamentary debate earlier this year on the treatment of gay people in the army an emotional Blunt said that hiding his sexuality in the forces did great “damage”. “I found a way of accommodating myself, the laws at the time and the rules of society of the time,” he told MPs.
He was forced to resign as chairman of the LGBT parliament group last year after he defended the convicted sex offender, Imran Khan, who sexually abused a teenage boy. After initially retracting his comments, he said in May 2022 that Khan was a victim of a “serious miscarriage of justice”.
A paid director for the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, he voiced his long-standing support for the cause this month, warning that the UK could be in “legal peril” if it continues with “unqualified support to the policy of the government of Israel”.
Two weeks ago, he was accused of slapping Andrew Bridgen, the former Tory MP expelled for his anti-vaccine views, on the back of the head. The previous day Bridgen had questioned why he had been kicked out of the Tories when a “Hamas apologist” remained.
Blunt supported Brexit before the 2016 referendum and backed Rishi Sunak for leader in both leadership attempts last year. Describing recent parliaments as “increasingly tumultuous”, he announced in May last year that he would be standing down at the next election, promising to call out “populist views on policy shibboleths” during his remaining time as an MP.