New Tory star: ‘Puritanical sex scandals may just be a fad’

THE “puritanical” pursuit of people in the wake of the sexual harassment scandal could be a fad like Live Aid, a rising Tory star has suggested, as she warned: “Something has gone very wrong.”

Kemi Badenoch, the 38-year-old Tory candidates chief, said that sexual advances which were considered appropriate a generation ago were now considered to be harassment by younger people. She raised concerns that the scandal had made things “a lot more puritanical than anything I ever saw in my 20s or in my teens”, adding that “you can’t really put your finger on what is what these days”.

In an interview with House magazine, she highlighted recent criticism of Friends, the popular Nineties television show. She said: “In the papers, they were talking about how Friends is now sort of really homophobic, transphobic and so on. That, for me, is a very, very – it’s actually a puritanical position, which I think of as conservative. So, you can’t really put your finger on what is what these days. Friends was the biggest television series of all time.

“Everybody loved it, it was syndicated all around the world. The idea that in a few years people are talking about it as if it’s this horrific series, for me that just doesn’t compute. Something has gone wrong somewhere.

“I don’t know whether it’s just a fad where people are saying these things and then they’ll move on to something else or whether this is now a permanent thing.”

Mrs Badenoch, a vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, raised concern that there had been a “generational” shift. She compared the trend to the Live Aid concerts. “When I first got into politics, this is 2005, there was Live Aid … and that was what everybody was talking about and then they sort of moved on from it.

“It was fashionable, they wore the bracelets, they went to the concert. I don’t know whether this is something like that, or whether this is something more profound and long-lasting.”