• The Guardian Sat urday 30 Apr il 2022

2

“Unless we ensure individuals are brought to justice,

nothing will change,” Kate Maltby wrote in the

Guardian in 2019. The latest comments about male

colleagues’ “wandering hands” from the international

trade secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan , combined

with the fact that no fewer than 56 MPs are under

investigation over sexual conduct, suggest that not

only have things not changed for the better since

Ms Maltby raised her own complaint in 2017, in some

respects they may even have got worse.

True, some MPs have been held to account for

inappropriate behaviour. Damian Green was sacked

from his position as fi rst secretary of state in 2017 after

an investigation found that he had lied to parliament

about pornography on his computer. No defi nitive

conclusion was reached in relation to Ms Maltby’s claim

that he had behaved wrongly towards her, although her

account was found to be “plausible”. In 2020 the former

Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke was sentenced to two

years in jail for three sexual assaults – two of them on a

parliamentary worker. Another Conservative MP, Imran

Ahmad Khan, was this month found guilty of sexually

assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008, while the Tory

MP David Warburton has had the whip removed after

allegations emerged of sexual harassment and cocaine

use. Labour MP Liam Byrne also faces suspension from

the Commons for non-sexual bullying of a male staff er.

But others continue to escape punishment, as the

Liberal Democrat Lord Lester did when he resigned

from the House of Lords in 2018 after peers voted not

to sanction him for sexual harassment. Tory MP Crispin

Blunt resigned from his position as chair of an all-party

As the war in Ukraine and its consequences weaken

Russia’s conventional military, Vladimir Putin’s

government has resorted to nuclear threats designed

to project strength. Mr Putin wants to intimidate

his opponents. But his strategy is failing. Instead of

Ukraine’s allies backing down, they are stepping up

their support. The US Congress this week approved

$11bn of arms to Ukraine, three times the total military

aid Washington has so far given.

The US president, Joe Biden, was right to call

out Mr Putin for making “ idle comments ” about

nuclear weapons. It is unthinkable that blunders and

miscalculations would take the world to the edge of the

nuclear abyss. Yet that is where the world is heading.

Whereas the Cuban missile crisis lasted 13 days,

Russia’s war is already into its third month. With no

clear end in sight, more deadly battles look inevitable

– increasing the chances of mistakes.

Mr Putin could be using nuclear rhetoric to give the

appearance of being unstable. His war is illegal and

immoral. His justifi cation for starting the invasion

was macabre and ludicrous. However, this may be

an act. Russia’s president could be trying to back

coercive diplomacy with the “ madman theory ” of

threatening excessive force, which includes the spectre

of nuclear weapons. However disagreeable this might

seem, a rational Mr Putin, with 2,000 tactical nuclear

warheads , is preferable to an irrational one.

LGBT+ rights group this month, after being criticised

for publicly attacking Ahmad Khan’s conviction. But

the whip was not withdrawn. And Boris Johnson’s

whips seemed reluctant, initially, to act against

another MP, Neil Parish , who is alleged to have

been seen watching pornography at work by two

colleagues. Instead, it was suggested that it was for

these witnesses to report him to the Independent

Complaints and Grievance Scheme set up following

#MeToo. Yesterday , it was announced that Mr Parish

would report himself, and the whip was suspended.

That these reports, which include Ms Trevelyan

saying she was once “ pinned up against a wall ” by

a male MP, should come just a week after a highly

public attempt to humiliate Labour’s Angela Rayner

for crossing her legs, makes them all the more

dismaying. And there is a sense of rising anger among

female MPs, both about the specifi c behaviour on

display in parliament and the culture of impunity that

continues to surround MPs; and about wider trends,

including the increasing use of pornography in public

places, and smartphone-enabled harassment.

Still, optimists point to the fact that women are

now more likely these days to complain about male

behaviour that would previously have been tolerated.

And given everything we know about the number

of sexual harassment and abuse experiences that go

unreported, it is diffi cult to assert with confi dence

that sexual misconduct in parliament has become

more common, or less, based on anecdotal evidence.

What can be stated fi rmly is that it is damaging both

to politics and to society when senior public fi gures

such as MPs treat women with such contempt.

Labour has its own diffi culties in this area.

This month a group of senior women in the party

called for an end to the use of confi dentiality

agreements when allegations are made. But the

latest news about Mr Parish, following Ahmad

Khan’s conviction, Mr Warburton’s suspension

and the scurrilous attack on Ms Rayner, mean that

Boris Johnson’s party heads into next week’s local

elections in a cloud of sleaze.

The concentration of such power in one man’s

hands ought to make the world sit up. Russia has few

mechanisms to prevent Mr Putin resorting to nuclear

weapons if he decided he had nothing to lose. In

the Guardian last month, Christopher S Chivvis at

the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

wrote that in war game scenarios he had taken part

in, which considered what would happen if Russia

hit Ukraine with nuclear weapons, the only way of

de-escalation was when “ clear political off -ramps

and lines of communication between Moscow and

Washington have remained open. In all the other

games, the world is basically destroyed .”

That is why the US president has been careful

not to provide Russia with a reason to go nuclear.

Mr Biden made it clear that the US would not place

boots on the ground , establish a no-fl y zone or

conduct intercontinental ballistic missile tests.

What Mr Biden has shown is that conventional

anti-tank and anti-aircraft technologies have

reached a new level of capability, one which has

rendered conventional invading ground forces

– unless overwhelmingly massed – almost obsolete.

Mr Biden has been shrewder than more gung-ho

Democrats or their ideological soulmates found in

Boris Johnson’s government.

Faced with costly military setbacks, Mr Putin has

refocused Russia on tightening its hold in Ukraine’s

east and south. The fi ghting might get worse before

it gets better. Pursuing Kyiv’s objectives through

relatively limited means has worked, though Russia

has been able to target civilians indiscriminately.

Ukrainians have every right to defi ne their war

aims. So do their Nato allies. One of their goals is

not to increase the chances that the war becomes a

potentially nuclear confl ict. Western leaders should

therefore reject provocative and escalatory requests

out of hand. Nothing else could be more dangerous.

 Continued from front

Russia is losing in Ukraine.

That is why Putin is

making nuclear threats

War

Politics

The list of instances of

Tory sexual misconduct

just keeps on growing

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‘Comment is free... but facts are sacred’ CP Scott

Even arch-leavers now admit

that Brexit has been a disaster

Jonathan Freedland

is hugely advantageous to consumers ”

after he and his comrades pulled us out of

the largest, most successful free trade bloc

in the world – the European single market – would be

funny if it weren’t so bitter.

At a stroke, the minister for Brexit opportunities has

implicitly admitted that there are none – or , at the very

least, any opportunities are outweighed by costs so

great they represent economic self-mutilation. In the

long story of Britain’s needless, pointless departure

from the EU, the Rees-Mogg admission should count

as a milestone. Which is not to say the Conservatives

won’t keep banging the Brexit drum, hoping it will

rally the electoral coalition it summoned back in 2019.

But the sound, always hollow, will now be hollower

still: thanks to Rees-Mogg, the Brexiters themselves

have admitted as much.

This matters not just as a twist in the Brexit saga but

for the life expectancy of this government. For Brexit

was this government’s founding purpose. When the

best that even the loudest advocates for that project can

promise is a delay in its realisation, it’s clear: the drive

has gone. And without such a goal, a destination to aim

for, governing parties drift and become vulnerable.

I

f the two usual determinants of an incumbent

administration’s popularity are the economy

and the personal standing of the leader, those

now combine dangerously for the Tories. The

cost of living crisis is both deep and wide,

reaching into families that had previously

been getting by, albeit with a struggle. It’s the

mother living off a tin of soup for herself so

her children can eat; it’s the parent getting the kids to

change into pyjamas when they get home from school,

to avoid wearing out their uniforms.

But this crisis runs in parallel with Partygate, each

revelation of indulgence in Downing Street aff ronting

not only those who followed the rules and denied

themselves contact with loved ones during lockdown,

but all those who do not have the money to put bread

on the table, let alone pay for a suitcase full of booze.

This is a Marie Antoinette government, pampering

itself while too many of its people go hungry.

The usual alibis are no longer working. The much

trumpeted vaccine rollout is increasingly off set in the

public mind both by Partygate and the handling of the

fi rst phase of the pandemic: witness this week’s high

court ruling that discharging people from hospitals

into care homes was “irrational” and unlawful. A new

poll shows a sharp decline in the number of voters

ready to forgive those early decisions just because

they’re glad they got the jab.

Nor does law and order any longer off er its traditional

comfort to Conservatives, not when new fi gures show

overall crime has increased by 18% in the past two

years, with the proportion of those charged down to

just 5.8%. On almost every issue, from infl ation to

immigration, tax to housing and the NHS, big majorities

think the government is handling things badly. Only on

defence and terrorism do the Tories get positive marks.

No wonder they like to hail Boris Johnson as a leader on

Ukraine, though that is of limited political value: most

voters surely sense that today’s Labour party would not

be doing anything diff erent.

In normal circumstances, you would say this

spells doom for Johnson. He lags behind Labour and

Keir Starmer on the two big ones: the economy and

leadership. People are far worse off than they were,

and they have lost all trust in him. His government is

stripped of its defi ning purpose, leaving it exposed to

daily squalls and scandal.

And yet, while the evidence is strong that voters

are making the break from this government, they

are not yet fully sold on the alternative. The old line

says it’s governments that lose elections, rather

than oppositions that win them. But changing

governments is a two-stage process: fi rst, the

electorate moves away from the incumbent party;

then it moves towards the challenger. Labour and

Starmer have work to do on that second stage. But

the fi rst phase is well under way – and Rees-Mogg’s

accidental truth revealed one reason why.