U.K. defense chief quits after harassment claims
LONDON — U.K. Defense Secretary Michael Fallon quit his post, citing allegations about his past conduct and becoming the first casualty of a sexual harassment scandal that is sweeping Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party as well as the Labour opposition.
“I accept that in the past I have fallen below the high standards that we require of the armed forces which I have the privilege to represent,” Fallon said in a letter to May released by her office late Wednesday and later repeated in a video statement released through broadcasters.
The resignation poses a new dilemma for May, who loses one of her safest pair of hands. Fallon, 65, was a veteran defender of Tory policies, deployed as an attack dog by both May and her predecessor David Cameron. He had been seen as a potential caretaker prime minister if May fell. Instead, he has become the latest problem to face her troubled government, which lost its parliamentary majority in June’s elections and is riven by divisions over Brexit policy.
Fallon is the first minister to lose his job in a scandal over sexual harassment. Around 40 Tory lawmakers have been named on a list being circulated at Westminster detailing allegations over sexual activities by lawmakers ranging from inappropriate behavior to affairs and fetishes.
Earlier in the week, Fallon said he had apologized at the time for repeatedly touching the knee of a journalist, Julia Hartley-Brewer, at a dinner 15 years ago and they had put the incident behind them. Hartley-Brewer, who said she had threatened to “punch him in the face” if he did it again, also downplayed the incident. On Wednesday, she told Sky News if his resignation was about that incident, “it’s mad and absurd and crazy.”