We’re all used to cabinet ministers ‘resigning’. Normally it is done with a heavy heart and a massive Boris boot-print right in the small of their backs. And we’re also kind of inured to the ‘typical scandals’ which afflict Westminster on a regular basis. Cash for questions, dodgy accounting in the ‘expenses’ department, fathering illegitimate children with a transgender kangaroo from Putney South, its all a bit ‘been there, done that…’ But generally its done following a scandal, a scoop by a red-top newspaper, by someone with a long lens, and there’s excuses, mitigation (it was just a constituency meeting… in her house at 4am with no clothes on and half a pound of coke sitting on the table) and a standard format method of delaying the inevitable.

So last night’s announcement from Chris Pincher, the deputy chief whip, that he had ‘drank too much the night before, caused embarrassment and has to resign’ was a clear indication that this was something catastrophically bad. If the man’s leader can lie, cheat and break the fucking law and get away with it, what could he have done that required immediate retirement??? How bad could it possibly be???

And as the Sun revealed this morning; it was bad. Well, fairly bad. Mr Pincher was blind drunk, in a conservative ‘members only’ club and groped two men. Not one. That would have been bad. But two! I mean, what did the first one think when the dirty two-timer ran off to grope another? How demeaning for poor Number 1. Unworthy of further grope-age.

If this had been two women groped they’d be calling for his head. Even if it happened yesterday and not 25 years ago. There’d be uproar. But as usual, the rules and regulations around sexual harassment tend to follow the ‘norm’ and once things get a bit ‘gay’ then everyone tends to back off a bit anyway. Though doubtless, ‘details will follow’. I’m just not sure I want to read them.

Happy Friday,

A xxxx