4 Tuesday April 5 2022 | the timestimes2
houses, seem almost tame in
comparison with the impression of
greed and excess — £840-a-roll gold
wallpaper; requests for the nanny to
be paid by donors; free Daylesford
deliveries and personal chefs — and
this widespread flouting of rules.
Which prompts the question: is
there something in the psyche of
politicians that makes them behave
badly? Because, with social media and
24-hour news heightening the threat
of exposure, why else
would they do it at all?
“The public can’t
expect MPs to be
angels.” That’s not
a line Warburton
might have spouted,
but comes from a
WhatsApp message
from Stephen Crabb,
a former work and
pensions minister and
would-be Tory leader,
to a woman in her
twenties he went on
to sext.
“Most politicians
are risk takers to one degree or
another,” the MP for Preseli
Pembrokeshire went on. “Usually in
the areas of money, sex, political
opportunism. Add in the adrenaline,
the attention you get, and the time
away from family... toxic mix.”
His suggestion that MPs’
indiscretions — sexual or financial —
are linked to risk is one backed up by
the Times columnist and former MPMatthew Parris. Citing Oscar Wilde’s
description of “feasting with panthers”,
Parris writes, in the preface to Great
Parliamentary Scandals: “It’s an apt
expression for all sorts of adventure.
It means hazard. It means foolish,
reckless excitement.” Far from the
secrecy and danger being “a
regrettable side-effect of the folly...
they are the reason for the folly. They
are the spice, the drug.” It’s certainly
true that MPs don’t tend to be risk-
averse. You can expend huge effort in
a campaign
for a seat
with no
guarantee
you’ll be
successful.
Then, once
you have
the job, you
become
accustomed
to the salary
and the cost
of running
two homes
— one in
London and
one in your constituency — that can
be swiped from you at the whim of
the electorate. (In my new thriller,
Reputation, the situation works the
other way: my MP Emma Webster
anticipates it will take three attempts
to be elected, only to discover she is
picked first time.)
While Warburton’s behaviour clearly
indicates a certain willingness to takeFrom top, and
below right: David
Warburton. Top right:
Rupert Friend and
Sienna Miller in
Anatomy of a Scandal;
Charlie Elphicke and
his wife, Natalie
Elphicke. Anatomy of
a Scandal is on Netflix
from April 15T
he MP sits, his eyes
glazed, in front of four
lines of cocaine he’ll
allegedly snort before
clambering naked into
a young woman’s bed
and assaulting her.
No, it’s not a scene
from the forthcoming Netflix series
Anatomy of a Scandal, which airs from
April 15, nor from my 2018 bestseller on
which it’s based — although perhaps
I should have thought of it. It’s a detail
from the latest Westminster disgrace,
this one involving the backbencher
David Warburton, Conservative MP
for Somerton and Frome.
The married father of two has had
the whip stripped from him after
allegations that he sexually assaulted
three women, two who worked as
parliamentary aides; snorted “line
after line after line” of cocaine; and
failed to disclose a loan in excess of
£100,000 from a Russian businessman
the Financial Conduct Authority had
refused to certify as a “fit and proper
person”. A relative of the MP was later
given a £75,000-a-year consultancy
job. The behaviour of the disgraced
56-year-old MP, who is accused of
groping the two parliamentary aides in
his taxpayer-funded flat, encapsulates
the imbalance of power at the heart of
Anatomy of a Scandal. The woman
with whom he is accused of snorting
coke before grinding his naked body
against hers said he was a powerful
man; she didn’t know which course of
action to take against him. The two
former aides could not discuss his
behaviour with their HR manager
because, um, she was his wife.
The allegations suggest little has
changed since the “Pestminster”
revelations that rocked parliament in
the wake of the Harvey Weinstein
scandal and claimed the scalps of two
cabinet ministers and several MPs.
Remember Michael Fallon, who
resigned after a journalist accused him
of making a pass at her? Or Damian
Green, who was found to have porn on
his office PC? Then, of course, there
was Charlie Elphicke, the former whip
and MP for Dover and Deal who was
imprisoned in July 2020 for sexually
assaulting two women, one a staffer
in her early twenties. Last month he
finally dropped his four-year libel
action against The Sunday Times,
which had reported that another
young female aide had gone to the
police alleging rape.
The pandemic only seems to have
heralded fresh opportunities for those
in politics to behave in ways many of
us would find questionable, to say the
least. Barnard Castle. The No 11 flat
refurbishment — with its initial
£58,000 invoice met by ConservativeCentral Office, and then a Tory donor.
The second jobs scandal (including
Geoffrey Cox earning almost
£6 million as a barrister while an MP
and working in the British Virgin
Islands for a month during lockdown).
Nearly £5 billion of PPE contracts
fast-tracked to companies with
political connections, and in a peak
instance of chumocracy, a knighthood
for Boris Johnson’s friend Evgeny
Lebedev despite the intelligence
services warning against it.
#Partygate, with its wheelie cases
of booze at a time when anyone else
could be fined for holding a party and
families couldn’t hug at funerals. And,
finally and perhaps most surprisingly,
Matt Hancock caught in a passionate
clinch with adviser Gina Coladangelo
in his Department of Health office, in
a clear breach of the social distancing
guidelines he had set out.
The days of the 2009 expenses
furore, with its purchase of duckSleaze inspired my
book, Anatomy of
a Scandal. I know
what an ugly game
politics can be.
By Sarah Vaughan