Does Leadsom want to derail Brexit... and put Corbyn in No 10?

POLITICS has always attracted unsavoury characters who put self-preservation and personal advancement above party and country. But this paper finds it hard to recall an example of treachery as egregious as Andrea Leadsom’s knifing of her Cabinet colleague, Sir Michael Fallon.

With Brexit looming – a cause Mrs Leadsom professes to care about passionately – Theresa May is entitled to expect her senior team to pull together in the national interest.

Yet this is the momentous juncture in our history at which the Commons Leader apparently chose to lodge a complaint against the outgoing Defence Secretary, on the strength of an off-colour remark he may or may not have made to her some six years ago (he hotly denies it).

Thus, she escalated a politically correct Twitter-storm over claims of sexism into a crisis threatening to destabilise Mrs May’s administration.

At the same time, she may have significantly heightened the threat of a terrorist-friendly Marxist regime, riddled with class hatred and anti-Semitism, under Jeremy Corbyn.

What is so contemptible is that she appears to have risked all this for no higher purpose than shoring up her own position in the Cabinet, which is understandably said to have been under threat.

In hindsight, it is easy to see that the warning signs of Mrs Leadsom’s overweening ambition were there in 2016, when she astonished Westminster by putting herself forward for the premiership – a job for which she was manifestly unfitted by experience, intellect or judgment.

This was the campaign, remember, in which she attacked Mrs May with one of the nastiest remarks any woman could level at another: ‘I am sure Theresa will be really sad she doesn’t have children, so I don’t want this to be “Andrea has children, Theresa hasn’t”.

‘I think that would be really horrible, but I genuinely feel that being a mum means you have a very real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake. She possibly has nieces, nephews, lots of people, but I have children who are going to have children who will directly be a part of what happens next.’ Now she has demonstrated again that what she lacks in ministerial ability, she makes up for in crude ruthlessness.

Though No 10 insists Mrs Leadsom stopped short of demanding Sir Michael’s scalp, it now appears clear that she prepared the ground for his removal in her Commons statement on Monday.

Telling the House which MPs should lose ministerial jobs or the party whip over claims of sexual harassment, she said: ‘I am setting the bar significantly below criminal activity. If people are made to feel uncomfortable, that is not correct.’

With those lethal words, she signalled she was prepared to see long and distinguished careers in public service go up in smoke, on the basis of a single clumsy pass, a risque remark or an unwelcome hand fleetingly brushed against a knee in the distant past.

Meanwhile, by absurdly presenting herself as a vulnerable ‘victim’, Mrs Leadsom no doubt reckons she has made her place at the Cabinet table unassailable.

As for the Tories, the entire party appears to have been seized by a collective nervous breakdown, attaching ludicrously disproportionate importance to gossip about misdemeanours as old as the human race.

Let the Mail be clear. Sexual misbehaviour is to be utterly condemned. In particular, a handful of this week’s claims are extremely grave – none more so than Labour activist Bex Bailey’s testimony that she was raped by a senior party official before being advised that her political prospects could suffer if she reported it.

Plainly, this is a matter for the police. Indeed, it’s a disturbing aspect of this sorry affair that Miss Bailey’s allegation – by far the most serious to have emerged so far – has been all but overlooked in the furore over ministerial resignations and speculation about more to come.

Mr Corbyn himself also has questions to answer about why he promoted MP Kelvin Hopkins, after he was warned about serious complaints against him.

The truth is that no party – least of all Labour – can seek to make political capital from this affair without facing charges of gross hypocrisy.

Is it too much to hope that, while the police probe allegations of criminality, politicians on both sides of the House will rediscover their sense of proportion – and get on with the job for which they were elected?

The Conservatives in particular now need to pull themselves together and get on with growing the country’s economy.

As for the treacherous Mrs Leadsom, she seems to believe she has made herself unsackable. This paper fervently hopes that’s not true.