SEX MINSTER
Rower was plied with whisky by party whip
THE Westminster sex scandal deepened last night after a Government whip was accused of making an unwanted sexual pass while dressed in his bathrobe.
Tory whip Chris Pincher was described as a ‘pound shop Harvey Weinstein’ over the allegation that he attempted to untuck the shirt of former Olympic rower and Conservative activist Alex Story.
Mr Story said Mr Pincher persuaded him to come back to his London home, where the older man poured him a whisky, massaged his neck and whispered: ‘You’ll go far in the Conservative Party.’
Mr Pincher then disappeared into another room and ‘returned in a bathrobe like a pound shop Harvey Weinstein, with his chest and belly sticking out.’ Mr Story then left.
Tamworth MP Mr Pincher, 48, said last night: ‘If Mr Story has ever felt offended by anything I said then I can only apologise to him.’
In a separate incident, Mr Pincher is accused of ‘touching up’ former Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop, who told him to ‘f*** off’. Mr Pincher did not refer to that allegation in his statement last night.
These are the latest in a series of shocking claims, including sexual harassment and bullying, which have rocked Westminster. They have led to the downfall of Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon, the suspension of Labour MP Kelvin Hopkins, and a Cabinet Office inquiry into Tory Minister Mark Garnier for getting his Commons secretary to buy sex toys for him.
The all-party sleaze crisis worsened yesterday as:
Former Daily Mail political reporter Jane Merrick revealed she told No10 last week how Fallon had lunged at her and tried to kiss her on the lips after a lunch in 2003 – a claim she believes triggered his resignation from the Cabinet;
It was revealed that former Health Minister Daniel Poulter is to be investigated by the Tory Party’s new disciplinary committee – seven years after allegations that he put his hand up the skirts of three female MPs were first reported to whips;
Tory MP Charlie Elphicke went into hiding after a police investigation was launched into ‘serious allegations’ against him – as friends said he had been ‘thrown to the wolves’ by Downing Street;
Labour was hit by rumours that there could be more allegations against MP Clive Lewis, who told an actor to ‘get on your knees, bitch’ at a party conference fringe event.
Writing in today’s Mail on Sunday, Mr Story reveals the ‘deceitful and outrageous’ way Mr Pincher behaved after they met while canvassing at Tory HQ in 2001.
Mr Pincher had stood as a Tory parliamentary candidate in the 1997 Election and he was a member of Iain Duncan Smith’s successful Tory leadership campaign team at the time. By contrast, Mr Story, who was 26 at the time, five years younger than Mr Pincher, says he was a ‘political novice’.
After leaving Tory HQ, a group of activists, including Mr Story, who competed in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, and Mr Pincher went to a nearby pub for a ‘couple of pints’. Mr Story then accepted an invitation to dinner at a restaurant but after getting into a cab, Mr Pincher took him to his London home.
After Mr Pincher poured him a whisky, Mr Story, who was single at the time and is now married with four children, says he started to feel ‘woozy’ while he sat on a couch. Mr Pincher ‘became unusually tactile.
‘He then started untucking the back of my shirt, massaging my neck and whispered, “You’ll go far in the Conservative Party.”
‘I assume he was suggesting if I did what he wanted he would help me get on the candidates list, too.’
Mr Story says Mr Pincher then ‘rushed into another room saying, “let me just slip into something
‘He acted in a deceitful and outrageous way’ ‘He has power over those seeking to go into politics’
more comfortable,” and returned in a bathrobe’. It was like a ‘sordid Carry On movie scene’, Mr Story says.
Mr Story says he was tempted to laugh about the incident, not least because Mr Pincher was small compared to his own 6ft 8in athletic frame.
But he said he had decided to speak out because Mr Pincher was a Government whip ‘who now carries the weight of office and the power of patronage that goes with it. That may lead someone else, faced with a similar predicament, to go along with it. Particularly if they hope to pursue a career in politics, as I did.’
Mr Pincher’s name appears on the ‘sex dossier’ of lurid claims compiled by Tory aides.
His entry says: ‘Inappropriate with male researchers and heavy drinker + apparently touched (or more) Tom Blenkinsop.’
No10 declined to comment.
THE stream of allegations about sexual misconduct by politicians at Westminster has become a rising tide, and with Theresa May already in trouble, there is the real prospect that a Government with such a slim majority could fall.
Mrs May has already lost a Defence Secretary, the Deputy Prime Minister, Damian Green, appears to be in trouble and by-elections are now a realistic prospect.
Sex scandals are nothing new in Britain, a country which, after all, has had David Lloyd George as one of its most notable Prime Ministers, a man known as ‘The Goat’.
Regrettably, they have become an expected part of the warp and weft of political life, the most notable being the Profumo scandal of the 1960s, when it emerged that the War Minister had been sharing a party girl called Christine Keeler with a Soviet spy.
But there are plenty of more recent and vividly remembered examples, in particular the series of sexual scandals that ensnared the Government of John Major.
No doubt he regrets it now, but in 1993 he used his Party Conference speech to proclaim a ‘Back to Basics’ campaign. He had intended to promote the common decencies rather than anything more prudish. The interpretation was left to others, however, as one after another of his MPs were exposed to accusation and ridicule. It was a series of sex and corruption cases that did much to bring the Government to a close.
Perhaps it is no surprise that, for all the very obvious dangers, our MPs do not seem to have learnt their lesson. Westminster, after all, is a strange and isolated place.
It is also dominated by excessive drinking. Parliament floats on a sea of alcohol served in discount bars, where MPs repair while waiting for interminable votes.
Politicians, very often from provincial backgrounds, find themselves stuck hundreds of miles from their partners.
Yes, it would be naive to ignore the fact that some of the young men and women at the heart of the furore are the equivalent of groupies, seeking to advance their own journalistic or political careers.
SOME MPs, meanwhile, seem to believe that the aphrodisiac of power gives them the right to lay their straying hands wherever they like. No one working in the Commons should be subject to boorish sexual bullying, let alone criminal behaviour.
It has become glaringly obvious that the mechanisms for policing the professional conduct of politicians are tokenistic and inadequate. And, more seriously still, that Westminster itself is in some ways profoundly unsuitable as a place where our collective future is to be determined.
There is a wider social context to the current maelstrom – a weariness to national life along with challenges to the established order, just as in 1963 when Profumo was exposed. It is an unflattering mirror on modern British life. We have become crude as a society, and we have lost our way in a chaos of ignorance and levity. Today the country, like Parliament, is drunken, sexually louche, and tawdry – and obsessed with electronic screens which allow innuendo and rumour to take wing. The online ‘mobocracy’ has become a serious threat.
These are rapidly changing times and they threaten danger to Britain’s place in the world, so there could hardly be a worse moment for the Government to be trapped looking inwards, imprisoned within the crumbling walls of the Palace of Westminster.
Instead, our leaders should be looking outwards, thinking strategically about where the country wants to be in 50 years’ time. At the very least, we need a new relationship with the European Union. Business people who employ millions of us need to be confident that the country has a direction as they make huge investment decisions.
But beyond that, and more significantly still, the tectonic plates of world power are shifting. America, the guarantor of Western wealth and stability, is being steadily supplanted by a more assertive China, whose $1trillion One Belt, One Road master plan is already funding rail and sea links that will eventually connect Europe with China’s rich industrial heartlands.
Strategically, China thinks in the long term; we do not.
The countries with which we hope to trade in future – whether it is Malaysia or New Zealand – are already in China’s pocket. The same applies to several of the poorer countries of southern Europe.
PUTIN’S assertive Russia is acting like a universal spoiler. Erratic Donald Trump threatens war with North Korea or Iran, seemingly at any time. Should Britain sail along in Trump’s stormy slipstream? Surely we should reposition ourselves in this new multipolar world.
All this coincides with a massive technological shift towards automation and robotics, a new industrial revolution that is likely to render swathes of our workforce as superfluous as carthorses.
Its logic means that many young people may graduate straight into a life of retirement. Hundreds of occupations look set to disappear, unless one is, for example, a hairdresser. The human factor will still count for haircuts.
My new book – The Best Of Times, The Worst Of Times: A History Of Now – shows just how challenging this new environment is.
What original thoughts does the new Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, a former Chief Whip with no discernible experience in this field, have about how to structure our Armed Forces for an age in which information may be the most important weapon in future ‘cyberwars’?
What strategic perspective does Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson bring to the new order, given that his mind seems focused on his own ambition and the next joke, mostly at the expense of foreigners? And what amid all of this is Theresa May doing to ensure we get a grip?
The current crisis should be an opportunity to focus a divided Conservative Party on the challenges that really count – the questions about our place in the world, and how we are to find one. This is what absorbs our competitor nations.
We, meanwhile, are an international laughing stock, a Parliament frozen in fear and a society on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
The Best Of Times, The Worst Of Times: A History Of Now, by Michael Burleigh, is published by Macmillan, priced £25. Offer price £20 (20 per cent discount, including free p&p) until November 12. Order at mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640.
What is Theresa May doing to ensure we get a grip?