Carry On Up The Commons!

THErE was always going to be more to it. And so it turned out. Michael Fallon had to resign not over a minor 15-year-old indiscretion but because he’d made a drunken pass at a fellow Cabinet member.

His nemesis was Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom, who complained to the Prime Minister that he’d behaved ‘ inappropriately’ towards her several years ago.

What was that about revenge being a dish best served cold? Fallon initially said he’d stood down as defence Secretary because his behaviour had ‘ fallen below the high standards we require from members of our Armed Forces’.

That never rang entirely true. If all he did was touch a woman’s knee at a lunch, as we were first told, I’d have thought his behaviour fell well above the standards we have come to expect from members of our Armed Forces.

Barely a week goes by without fresh revelations of frigging in the rigging and hanky-panky in the ranks.

If non- consensual knee contact is now regarded as a court- martial offence, there wouldn’t be a warship left afloat, nor a fighter jet in the sky and most of our soldiers would be banged up in the sex crimes wing of the glasshouse.

For instance, over the past couple of weeks we’ve been bombarded with salacious stories about serial shenanigans among the crew of one of our nuclear submarines, HMS Vigilant. They read like a script for Carry on Up The Conning Tower and resulted in the captain being relieved of his command.

Stop sniggering at the back. That’s a technical term, not a punchline.

His No 2 was also forced to walk the plank for sexual misconduct. Four officers were disciplined for affairs with members of the crew and nine submariners were sacked after they tested positive for cocaine.

It fell to the then defence Secretary to take firm action. Michael Fallon ( for it was he) is reported to have given the First Sea Lord, Sir Philip Jones, a ‘ roasting’. ( Presumably, though, not in the sense we have come to associate with philandering professional footballers.)

Fallon wasn’t to know when he adopted his high moral tone with the Navy that within 72 hours, he himself would be the one being keelhauled. It would take a heart of oak not to laugh.

FALLoNturns all ‘ Jekyll and Hyde’ in drink, by all accounts. So it was no great surprise to discover that not only does he consider himself some kind of sex god, he also fancied himself as a future Prime Minister. Mind you, don’t they all? I’m also curious about the motive behind the timing of the kneegrabbing revelation. Julia HartleyBrewer, the journalist on the receiving end, said she thinks it was no big deal and Fallon shouldn’t have had to resign over it — unless he’d done something more serious. Now we know he had. All over Westminster, there is the sound of old scores being settled and self- styled feminists on the make exploiting the situation to raise their own political profiles. Me too, me too, me too.

Look, before the usual suspects start bouncing up and down, I’m not trying to belittle genuine allegations of serious sexual assault, which should be a matter for the police.

The worst aspect of the feeding frenzy over Fallon is that a credible claim by a Labour activist, who has waived her anonymity to allege that she was raped by a senior Labour party official, seems to have been brushed aside in pursuit of a terminal ‘Tory sleaze’ tsunami.

My point is simply that this latest outbreak of madness was utterly predictable. I told you after the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal broke that the Westminster political class would be gagging to get in on the act. Never underestimate their capacity to make everything about them.

Since then we’ve been subjected to endless sound and fury over a whole variety of transgressions, from a minister sending out his secretary to buy sex toys to some self-promoting dopey bird in a corset trying to destroy the career of an old family friend who didn’t make a pass at her.

We’ve had the now infamous ‘spreadsheet of shame’ containing unsubstantiated, anonymous allegations of bad behaviour by MPs, compiled by, well, no one seems to have any idea.

That hasn’t stopped every single spit and cough being circulated on the internet and subsequently dissected as if they were proven facts chiselled in stone. Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? Politicians who want to shackle the free Press are more than happy to join in trial by unregulated social media.

The accused are declared guilty without even knowing who their accusers are.

What we’re dealing with, in most cases, is malicious gossip masquerading as hard evidence.

Admittedly, some of these claims are absolutely hilarious. I particularly enjoyed the minister who is supposed to make his subordinates vacuum the carpet in their underwear while wearing women’s perfume. (I think that’s right.)

ANdI didn’t know that female minister X had been enjoying a bit of extra-curricular rumpypumpy with a fellow Tory MP. If it’s true — and she hasn’t denied it — you can’t help wondering why she looks so miserable all the time.

Nor did I know that the same MP had also been squiring another female minister. That might not be true, either, since tittle-tattle is being conflated with proof of serious wrongdoing.

What’s undeniable is that some men abuse their positions of power to coerce sexual favours from female subordinates.

It’s also true that some women are not averse to using their sexual wiles to their own advantage. Lines get blurred. on HMS Vigilant, the captain and some of his senior officers overstepped the mark and had to be dealt with for breaches of military discipline.

But, cocaine-snorting aside, what else did the Ministry of defence expect when they insisted on fit young men and women serving alongside each other in a confined space for months on end?

The same goes for Westminster, as insular an institution as any nuclear submarine. Men and women, of differing status, are thrown together, awash on a sea of subsidised alcohol, with inevitable consequences. That doesn’t excuse genuine bad behaviour. But, for heaven’s sake, can we stop getting everything out of proportion.

Is it too much to hope that the political class grows up and stops behaving like a cross between a medieval, torch-led, lynch mob and a bunch of soppy schoolgirls bitching away on social media?

What we’ve seen at Westminster this week is life imitating Twitter — lurid allegations presented as gospel and posturing politicians queuing up to parade their virtue.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has been preoccupied with this nonsense and forced into a Cabinet reshuffle, when she should be concentrating on the biggest political challenge of the past 50 years — getting us out of the EU in one piece.

Never mind Carry on Up The Conning Tower, it’s time to bring down the curtain on the longestrunning farce in town, Carry on Up The Commons.