6POLITICS
His wife
stood by
him,
calling
him a
lovely
personNeil Parish resigned as a Conservative
MP yesterday, having admitted watching
pornography in the House of Commons
after looking at tractors on the internet.
The former farmer conceded
yesterday that he had viewed X-rated
content in parliament twice, describing
it as a “moment of madness” andsomething of which he was “not proud”.
His departure, less than 24 hours after
his actions were made public, paves the
way for a by-election in the safe Tory seat
of Tiverton & Honiton in Devon.
Parish, 65, said the first time he had
watched pornography was accidental,
insisting he had been looking at tractors
on his mobile phone before straying on
to a website with a “very similar name”.He said he watched the video “for a bit,
which I shouldn’t have done”.
On the second occasion, however, the
married father of two admitted he had
looked at porn deliberately while waiting
to vote at the side of the chamber. “What
I did was absolutely wrong,” he told the
BBC.
Parish, who chaired the Commons
environment, food and rural affairscommittee, issued a “full apology” to the
two female MPs who had seen him
watching the pornography, but insisted
it was “not my intention to intimidate”.
It marked a significant U-turn in 24
hours. At first he had defied calls to quit
and said he would await the findings of a
parliamentary investigation. A growing
number of Conservative MPs made clear
that his position was untenable,however, and that he should resign
immediately rather than prolong the
controversy days before the local
elections on Thursday.
One colleague said: “It was hard to see
how he could come back, given the
public exposure.”
Pressure on Parish is also understood
to have increased after he gave media
interviews in which he appeared toadmit to having watched the
pornography.
Speaking from his farmhouse near
Bridgwater, in Somerset, on Friday
evening, he also suggested he was
relieved that he had been named after
days of fevered speculation.
“I’m beginning to relax now. And
strangely, now it’s out in the open, it’s
almost as if a weight is lifted off me,
really,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
In an interview with The Times, Sue,
his wife of 40 years, described his
actions as “stupid” and “very
embarassing” but stood by him,
describing Parish as a “normal guy” and
a “lovely person”.
His departure means that the
Conservatives are now facing the
prospect of having to defend two by-
elections in short succession.
Imran Ahmad Khan, who was elected
MP for Wakefield in 2019, tendered his
resignation last week after being
convicted of sexually assaulting a
teenage boy. Labour is widely expected
to win back the seat.
Conservative Party insiders are also
braced for a third by-election. They are
awaiting the outcome of the
investigation into David Warburton, who
had the Tory whip withdrawn last month
after it was alleged that he sexually
harassed three women.
Although Parish’s constituency has
returned a Conservative at every
election since its creation in 1997 — and
the party has a majority of 24,000 —
Tory insiders fear that it shares parallels
with North Shropshire, the seat lost to
the Liberal Democrats in December after
the resignation of the disgraced MP
Owen Paterson.
Last night a Lib Dem source said: “As
we saw in North Shropshire, there is a
real backlash against Boris Johnson from
rural communities who are fed up with
being taken for granted.”
Before the pornography revelations,
Tory high command already had doubts
about Parish after an incident in which
he risked being shot dead by the police.
Parish, who was backing Jeremy Hunt
for the party leadership in 2019, had
tried to overtake Hunt’s armed
protection squad to catch up with him
on the campaign trail.
“He was lucky not to be run off the
road or shot as a terrorist,” a source said.Harry Yorke and Tim Shipmanmeal while out in the field.
It’s a fully contained thing.
It isn’t just the agricultural
community that loves them,
either. Yesterday, after Neil
Parish claimed that he was
looking at tractors when he
ended up on a porn site,
people were joking on social
media about Cornhub and
OnlyFarms instead of
Pornhub and OnlyFans, but
we actually do refer to
“tractor porn”. We know that
if we put a picture of a shiny
tractor on the cover of
Farmers Weekly, newsstand
sales go up.
It is that slightly phallic
thing too — the “mine is
bigger than yours” attitude.
In the Clarkson’s Farm TV
series, Jeremy was very
pleased with the size of his
Lamborghini tractor. His
argument is that you can’t
have a tractor that’s too big,
but actually, some are too big.
And people will over-spec
their tractor — a bit like
having a ride-on lawnmower
for a tiny front garden. Some
farmers buy machinery for
the sake of it, trying to claim
there’s a business case for
purchasing it when there
isn’t, they just really want it.
There’s a stigma about
being too showy about your
tractor. If you put something
really heavy on the back, like
a plough, you have to have
front-end weights to balance
it out. Some farmers put a
massive toolbox on the front,
and there’s a sector of the
farming community that calls
those “wanker boxes”.
People take the mickey
because it’s ostentatious.
Johann Tasker is podcast
editor at Farmers Weekly. He
spoke to Rosamund UrwinTractor fetish
that drew MP
into muck of a
different kind
Neil Parish insists he was admiring farm
gear when he first strayed on to a porn
site — but admits he went back for more6POLITICS
Man and machine
in perfect harmony
— it’s a love affair
Tractors are all about pulling
power. It’s the roar of the
engine and the plume of
smoke as you drop the
plough into virgin soil to
begin another run across the
field.
Nearly every farmer has
one, of course, and they’re
fundamental to agricultural
work. But there’s also a “boys
and their toys” element to it:
both little boys and big boys.
Most farmers will probably
spend more of their waking
hours with their tractors than
with their wives. And just as
some drivers give nicknames
to their cars, it’s not unheard
of for farmers to give a pet
name to their tractor.
Tractors have come a long
away from the very basic
machines, such as the open-
cabbed Little Grey Fergie, of
70 years ago. Back then, they
had very basic suspension
and were noisy and open to
the elements — you were
sitting out there in all
weathers. Today, you have all
the mod cons; air suspension,
air-conditioned cabs and
satellite navigation so you
don’t have to steer.
The advanced ones will do
most of the work for you,
even driving up and down the
field. You can sit in the cab
and do very little: play on
your phone, read a book and
even, I suppose, look at porn.
There was even someone
who put a microwave in the
front so he could have a hotJOHANN
TASKER RNeil Parish,
below, developed
a keen eye for
agricultural
equipment as a
former farmer
and chaired a
Commons
committee on
rural affairs