This ‘sex scandal’ is a total travesty
Pardon me for asking, but what exactly is it that Damian Green has done? I realise that demanding proof of wrongdoing before a man’s reputation is hanged, drawn and quartered marks me out as a bit 20th century, but still, I’m genuinely curious. Over the past week, the de facto deputy prime minister has gone from being somebody who seemed likeable and pragmatic, to the single word I heard in the queue at the Co-op yesterday when I mentioned his name. “Porn?” said one woman seeking confirmation from her friend, “Isn’t he the porn one?”
Actually, it’s not clear Green had anything to do with the pornography that, apparently, police found on a computer in his parliamentary office back in 2008. Green denies any knowledge of the material, which the police admitted was perfectly legal. Never mind. There is no one quite as friendless as the man whose name has been muddied in the middle of a moral panic. His allies dare not speak out lest they be called apologists for sexual harassment. Political enemies, meanwhile, revel in his discomfort. As for his wife and children, well, we don’t pause to extend imaginative moral sympathy because that would spoil the fun, wouldn’t it?
Well the fun or, at least, the borderline unhinged spate of accusations and counter-accusations will temporarily have to stop. For, as I write, there comes the tragic news of the death of Carl Sargeant. The 48-year-old Welsh cabinet minister, husband to Bernie and father of Lucy and Jack, is believed to have taken his own life after he was suspended by Labour on Friday following allegations of sexual misconduct.
In his last tweet, Mr Sergeant said that he found the accusations “shocking and distressing”. The details had yet to be disclosed to him. We don’t know whether there was any truth in the complaints, nor how serious they were. What we do know is that Carl Sergeant appears to be the first fatality in the witch-hunt that has consumed Westminster, a pursuit characterised by a dismaying lack of proportion and a gutless response from our cowering political classes.
But let’s go back to the allegations against Damian Green to see how the witch-hunt gathered momentum. The story that landed the First Secretary of State in trouble came from Kate Maltby, a “scholar, critic and journalist”. Green was a friend of Maltby’s parents from Oxford days. While she was still in her teens, Maltby used the connection to secure an interview with him for her school magazine. When she became a Tory activist in her twenties, she contacted him again to “ask for advice”. In 2014, they met for a coffee and Green was “helpful and avuncular”. Early the following year, Green invited Maltby for a drink and they discussed her pursuing a political career. Then, according to Maltby, Green steered the conversation to the number of affairs MPS had and mentioned that his own wife was very understanding.
“I felt a fleeting hand against my knee – so brief, it was almost deniable,” she wrote, “I moved my legs away, and tried to end the drink on friendly terms. I then dropped all contact for a year. I wanted nothing to do with him.
“For a while I wondered if I’d imagined the incident. I had no proof… But I was angry. I had felt a meaningful political relationship was developing – suddenly, I’d been made aware that there might be a price I was not prepared to pay.”
The key sentence here is “I had no proof ”. A “fleeting hand” does not a Harvey Weinstein of Westminster make. But the story didn’t end there. In May last year, Maltby posed in a corset to illustrate a piece about the history of corsets. She got a text from Green admiring the picture and asking if she was free for a drink. Maltby ignored it but, six weeks later, when Green was suddenly one of the most important men in the country, Maltby texted him. “Many congratulations on joining the Cabinet… I’ll look forward to seeing what you achieve in government.” Overnight, the alarming “sex pest” had become someone Maltby was happy to cultivate.
I would go to the wall for any woman hurt or threatened by an abusive male, but this is a travesty. By turning what was, at worst, a rather timid and failed attempt at flirtation into a career-besmirching blunder, Maltby has risked bringing her gender into disrepute. Not to mention undermining the genuine trauma of women such as Bex Bailey, who claims she was raped by a senior Labour colleague and whose story was soon eclipsed by Maltby’s.
There is absolutely no doubt that Westminster is a time warp that is rank with bullying and misogyny. Certain Labour brethren are every bit as neolithic as those dysfunctional Tories who regard young female (and often male) staff as an all-you-can-eat buffet. Dismantling the boys’ club on both sides of the House and holding all members, honourable and otherwise, to the standards of the modern workplace is long overdue.
What should trouble us is trial by media before there are any formal charges. So unhinged did the level of spite become that there have been gleeful predictions of names of yet more offenders. Pitchforks at the ready! Let those tumbrels roll!
Beyond Westminster and the media village, I suspect millions of normal Britons are watching these antics, rolling their eyes and wondering: “What are they doing about Brexit?”
What we desperately need is strong leadership. Theresa May appears helpless, buffeted about by each new gust of outrage instead of speaking sternly and restoring a sense of proportion. That would be most welcome, Prime Minister. The wheels of justice turn slow, but the wheels of social media spin uncontrollably fast and society is ever more driven by the latter. Not all misdemeanours are crimes, but you wouldn’t know that nowadays. A man is dead today because what began as a legitimate concern spiralled into a kind of mania. I find that far more distressing than a fleeting hand against the knee.