LONDON BRITCHES FALLING DOWN … Three scandals that rocked British politics

Lord Archer and the lady

In 1987, when he was both an MP and one of the bestselling novelists in the world, Jeffrey Archer, was accused by a newspaper of having sex with a prostitute.

He brought a libel case against the paper and won, getting an award of £500,000.

However in 1999 it emerged that he had fabricated his alibi for the 1987 trial, and he was jailed for four years for perjury.

The MP and the gangster

In 1964, the Sunday Mirror reported that police were investigating a gay relationship between an unnamed peer of the realm and a major criminal figure. The men involved were Conservative MP Bob Boothby and Ronnie Kray, a notorious East End gangster.

Boothby sued the paper and won, with the editor having to back down and the paper paying damages.

However, in 2009 a tranche of letters that resurfaced showed that Boothby and Kray were indeed more than friends.

Major and Minor

Spitting Image famously lampooned John Major as a grey character who ate his peas with a knife and fork — but Edwina Currie said of him: “He was a sexy beast. Trust me, I didn’t have to teach that man anything.”

In 2002 she revealed that between 1984 and 1988, while both were married to other people, she had a four-year affair with Major — who went on to become Prime Minister.

She said she stopped the affair when they became more senior in the party and it became impractical due to the presence of bodyguards, and called him “the love of my life”.