Time to crop out toxic Sir Gavin
Who would ever have thought that Gavin Williamson, the former Tory chief whip who liked to keep a leather riding crop on his desk at work, might be a foulmouthed bully boy?
I mean, why would a habit of ostentatiously displaying your pet tarantula in the office – a creature you call Cronus after the psychopathic king in Greek mythology who ate all his children and castrated his own father – ever ring any warning bells?
The only person in UK politics, in fact, who appears to have been blindsided by Williamson’s workplace behaviour is none other than our new prime minister.
On assuming office, Rishi Sunak pitched himself as Mr Integrity. Yet he saw fit to reappoint to the cabinet a man who is allegedly guilty of effing and blinding at fellow MPs, of serial bullying, and even of threatening a civil servant with talk of a slit throat.
Sir Gavin is no knight of the realm. He’s Westminster at its most toxic.