Sexual harassment in Parliament
“Someone once joked that politics is ‘show business for ugly people,’” said Labor Party lawmaker in the Mail on Sunday. So it should come as no surprise that in the wake of Hollywood’s Harvey Weinstein scandal, Britain’s Parliament should be the next institution to be exposed as a hotbed of sexual harassment. The ruling Conservative Party has been hit with dozens of accusations in the past two weeks: Defense Secretary Michael Fallon resigned after several allegations, including that he lunged at and attempted to kiss a female political journalist. Trade Minister Mark Garnier admitted that he once sent an aide, whom he called “sugar t--s,” to buy sex toys for him. More seriously, an activist with the opposition Labor Party, Bex Bailey, claimed that she was raped by a senior party figure in 2011 and was advised by party officials not to contact police because “it might damage her career.” For too long, Parliament has been a boys’ club where powerful men could abuse younger women consequence-free, said Independent.co.uk in an editorial. The “revolution in attitudes” postWeinstein “is certainly overdue and much to be welcomed.”
Allegations of serious crimes must be investigated, said Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail. But the “witch hunt” now playing out in Parliament means that lives are being ruined over something as innocent as a bottom pinched in jest. More worrisome still is that normal standards of fairness—the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty—“have been jettisoned as hysteria runs riot.” Conservative lawmaker Damian Green, who is effectively the deputy prime minister, has been accused of touching the knee of party activist Kate Maltby in 2015. “Not the most serious accusation in the world, but serious enough to harm Green, who has no way of proving this didn’t happen—as Maltby has no means of proving it did.” I fear we Brits are losing our bawdy sense of humor, said Libby Purves in The Times. Over the centuries, we’ve laughed at Chaucer’s “lusty bachelors” grabbing wenches and Benny Hill’s hands-on pursuit of buxom beauties. Yet one of Fallon’s supposedly grievous offenses was telling a colleague that he knew somewhere she could “warm her cold hands.” Is that really a crime? Prudery on this scale “risks making men resentful, cautious, and tempted to avoid women or seek chaperonage.”
This is a serious scandal, not mere prudery, said Sean O’Grady in Independent.co.uk, and it may affect Britain’s planned exit from the European Union. Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government is so fragile that if a few of her lawmakers were forced out over harassment, she could lose her majority, triggering a new election. Evidence about the devastating costs of Britain’s impending departure from the EU is mounting, so disgusted voters might elect a Labor government that is more willing to make concessions and strike a deal with the bloc—one that keeps the U.K. inside the EU’s single market. That scenario “may not be probable, let alone likely, but, as we have seen in recent years, the political game is an increasingly unpredictable one.”