Not since his horror on hearing that lockdown-breaking parties had happened in his own home have we heard the prime minister so appalled by the behaviour of colleagues. Discovering, last week, that one of them had spoken repellently about Angela Rayner, he tweeted: “I deplore the misogyny directed at her anonymously today.”
Because if you’re going to be misogynistic about female politicians, isn’t it always better to put your name to it, like, say, Boris Johnson when he analysed female contributions to a Labour conference? “Time and again the ‘Tottymeter’ has gone off as a young woman delegate mounts the rostrum.”
Anonymous remarks – well, certainly ones in which perfectly standard Conservative objectifying have caused civilian offence – are a different matter. It was, Johnson said, “intolerable”. “I have to say I thought it was the most appalling load of sexist, misogynist tripe.” And believing as ever that an unrelated shred of cultural capital adds class to his gibberish, Johnson likened himself to another deluded leader who lost all authority. Paraphrasing King Lear: “If we ever find who is responsible for it, I don’t know what we will do, but they will be the terrors of the earth.”
Perhaps we can help? Not that it narrows it down much, but could the choice of Basic Instinct, so foundational for Johnson’s more furtive cohort, perhaps point to another 50ish man, raised before Conservatives could enjoy, as they do now, uninhibited workplace access to porn? As for retribution, it is all too clear how Johnson’s party normally deals with a Conservative MP whose misogyny or sexual attitudes make him unfit for public office. It does sod all.
Given the party’s recovery, unabashed, from the sort of #MeToo allegations that forced lasting reform in many other institutions, any terrors would be wildly inconsistent. Even with three cabinet ministers reportedly among the more than 50 MPs under investigation for sexual misconduct, there is little sign of the party’s accepting – like, however reluctantly, the Metropolitan police – that the risks of sheltering misogynists, predators and creeps may finally outweigh their traditionally respected role in its workforce.
Just last month, Crispin Blunt MP, well known for his interest in legalising prostitution, declared the conviction of fellow Tory MP Imran Ahmad Khan for the sexual assault of a boy a “miscarriage of justice”. He remains at work. So do Conservative colleagues Stephen Crabb, whose sexually explicit texts to a 19-year-old interviewee merely “fell short” of party standards; Damian Green, demoted after sexual harassment and pornography allegations; and Rob Roberts, readmitted – the whip only suspended – after sexually harassing a junior member of staff. David Warburton, reportedly accused by three women of sexual harassment, is similarly suspended, pending investigation.
Since elaborating on his personal struggles, Jamie Wallis, Westminster’s first trans MP, appears to have been exonerated for his earlier association with a sugar daddy website (“Are you a student, a single parent or just short of money?”). Johnson’s long history of workplace affairs with younger staff, right up to the one with a twentysomething favourite from party communications, we know about. Matt Hancock’s excuse for pandemic priapism: “I fell deeply in love.”
It looked for a while as if porn enthusiast Neil Parish would loyally take a lead from his leader’s approach to party investigation and wait for an inquiry – this one to tell him if he liked perving at work. That was until he yesterday confessed to his “moment of madness”.
That leaves the Basic Instinct briefer who could reasonably expect colleagues to offer at least as much support as was extended to Charlie Elphicke, the convicted sex offender whose wife, Natalie, inherited his constituents. The Conservatives’ signature line in defending the indefensible originates, in fact, well before #partygate, when the whips rescinded Elphicke’s suspension (for being under investigation for sexual assault), so he could vote. The Sunday Times reported on the Elphicke cover-up that five senior Conservative MPs – Mrs Elphicke, Roger Gale, Theresa Villiers, Adam Holloway and Bob Stewart – were subsequently forced to apologise or be suspended from the Commons “for improperly trying to influence a judge” on his behalf, an act “corrosive to the rule of law”.
So while not, as far as we know, rivalling Charing Cross police station for professional depravity, the ruling party demonstrates scarcely more interest in respecting either women or normal workplace boundaries. The existence of the latest porn connoisseur was exposed when female Conservative MPs complained to their chief whip about intolerable sexism and harassment, presumably over and above the eminent cases of which he will be aware.
Is the Conservative party especially attractive to sexual miscreants or does it take formerly respectful men and make them that way? Whatever the process, it accords with Johnson’s great man theory of history that leadership by a devotee of covert asymmetrical relationships, someone with a documented view of individual women as assemblages of sexual characteristics, would only exacerbate its institutionally sexist culture.
If Westminster harassment is now as pervasive as even Nadine Dorries can remember, it is hard to see this being corrected while Johnson, with as little moral authority on this subject as on any other, remains in office.
Under him, his party would seem an outlier on extreme misogyny and sexual harassment if it weren’t so redolent of standards recently prevailing in the Metropolitan police. It will be in his nature, as with #partygate, to blame underlings, to attempt piety, to aim his mini-terrors of the earth at men who think identically about younger female colleagues.
Women should demand, instead, the kind of cultural transformation now being proposed by Sir Stephen House, Cressida Dick’s acting successor at the Metropolitan police. “There is a significant campaign within the organisation to deal with this completely unacceptable behaviour, to root it out and to exit those people who are exhibiting that behaviour from the organisation as fast as possible and in the right way.” But Dick, who’d never even called women “totty”, had to exit first.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
