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What will this Parliament be remembered for? Optimistic Conservatives might point to Britain’s departure from the European Union in 2020.
Critics of the government might argue that what is more impressive is that we have had three prime ministers in less than six months.
Another way to look back on the past four and a half years is to focus on the creepy characters and con artists and realize that they barely made it out of the headlines.
Since May 2021, a staggering 11 MPs have left Parliament following allegations of sexual, financial or criminal misconduct, leading to by-elections.
By the end of this parliament, 17 MPs would sit in the House of Commons without a party leader, a larger group than the Liberal Democrats.
At least seven of them have been accused of sexual, financial or criminal misconduct – the actual figure is likely to be higher as several MPs have been suspended from their parties without public explanation.
The cases themselves are often tragic: Imran Ahmad Khan was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy; Chris Pincher was accused of molesting multiple men over a decade.
Peter Bourne was found to have “committed a variety of bullying acts and one offence of sexual misconduct” towards staff, while Geraint Davies was accused of sexual harassment by five women.
Other cases may have been less unpleasant but still shocking, such as Scott Benton, who was caught in a newspaper sting operation after offering to lobby ministers in exchange for money.
More recently, MP William Wragg fell victim to a honey trap after sending photos of his genitals to a stranger on an app and then being blackmailed into sending contact details of his parliamentary colleagues.
At a time when the public is less than favourable towards their politicians, immorality continues unabated, putting Westminster in a bad light.
This is primarily an issue for the Conservative Party, but other parties have also been found to have committed wrongdoing: Labour, the Scottish National Party, the Democratic Unionist Party and Plaid Cymru have all had to strip at least one MP of their party leadership powers in the past four years.
Are parliaments getting worse? Was this parliament really as bad as it seemed? These are simple and obvious questions, but the answers are not always readily available – and they vary depending on who you ask.
“The 2019 Congress is going to be very interesting because of the unique challenges the new lawmakers will face,” said a longtime political journalist who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“They don’t have the support of their elders, and when they come back after the pandemic, […] They were acting like freshman boys, getting drunk all the time, and having sex with each other.”
They stressed that the problem extends beyond new recruits, but the change in atmosphere they brought about after the election didn’t help anyone.
Similarly, a former Conservative MP before the 2019 election noted that “the character of people coming to Parliament tends to be less respectful of the establishment”.
“If you’re some kind of instigator and you say the blob is coming after you, you’re more likely to be picked,” they say. “It feels like it leads to less respect for rules and institutions.”
Jill Rutter, senior research fellow at Britain in a Changing Europe, added that when there is “a big, unexpected expansion”, as the Conservatives did in 2019, “you tend to get people who are not particularly expected and who are elected quite late”.
This is a compelling theory, because it is true that many of the 2019 lawmakers have not been able to rest on their laurels since being elected.
Elsewhere, Rob Roberts lost his position as Conservative leader for inappropriate interactions with staff, and Claudia Webb was expelled from the Labour Party after being found guilty of harassment in court. Still, you can’t blame all of Parliament’s problems on less-new MPs.
Neil Parish, of tractor porn fame, was first elected in 2010, but so was Mark Menzies, who lost his leadership position last month after being found guilty of misusing campaign funds.
David Warburton, who admitted to using cocaine but denied the harassment allegations, became an MP in 2015. Chris Matheson also became an MP in the same election but resigned in 2022 after being accused of “serious sexual misconduct”, which Matheson also denied.
In short, while it would be convenient to point to this unusual occurrence and determine that everything else was fine, it appears that the rowdy behavior of the Class of 2019 is only one piece of the puzzle.
Another possible explanation, some people argue, is that this Congress has simply been running for too long.
“Corruption and fraud are hallmarks of the final years of a government,” the journalist said. “I saw it in the final years of a government. [of the Major government] “We saw that in the ’90s and we saw that in the late 2000s, and part of the reason is that at that stage some people can’t take the whipping and therefore they start behaving badly.”
A Conservative MP expressed a similar but slightly more cynical view, namely that being in power for too long “makes it much harder for us as a political party to keep things out of the newspapers”.
Bottom row, left to right: Chris Pincher, accused of groping multiple men over a 10-year period; William Ragfell, accused of a honey-trap scheme; and Neil Parish of “tractor porn” fame. (Photos: Thierry Monasse/Getty Images; Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
In the early days, party leaders and reporters may have been able to keep a tight lid on what was going on, or placate docile journalists with promises of better and bigger exclusives, but such tactics won’t work forever.
The combination of increasingly badly behaved MPs and politicians no longer willing to turn a blind eye to the occasional embarrassing incident is likely to see sordid behaviour make the front pages more frequently.
In addition, if parliament continues for a long time, some conflict and resentment is bound to arise.
For every member of parliament and special advisers who is riding high, there are still four or five around who are unhappy with being out of the spotlight and eager to share whatever they hear with voracious reporters.
“You’ve been in Westminster for a long time and you have people to gossip to because there’s a lot of turnover,” Mr Rutter said.
Fortunately for them, “the press is now very accessible to anyone who wants to get in touch because if you have a story you can send a direct message to any journalist,” she added. Technology aside, there are more reporters around Westminster than ever before.
The boom in online media has given birth to countless new outlets, many of which now have access to lobbying, and the chaos of Brexit has led many established media outlets to assemble larger political teams than ever before. Parliament is now largely quiet, but these newsrooms still expect frequent scoops. Once journalists can no longer rely on meaningful votes and the constant excitement of infighting, they will turn to more sordid issues.
This is of course a good thing, but it could lead to the impression that things are getting worse in Westminster when there is simply more scrutiny. Importantly, it seems worth noting that this is happening at a time when attitudes in British politics are finally changing.
Peter Botting, who has worked with parliamentary candidates for decades, said that when it comes to politicians, this string of inappropriate behaviour cannot be attributed to changes in their qualifications or personalities.
Rather, “people are not putting up with as much nastiness as they used to. Gay men slapping male staff on the butt, or straight men doing the equivalent, was largely just part of parliamentary work. It was acceptable before, but it’s not anymore.”
To put it bluntly, he’s right: “Twenty-odd years ago, there was no one to report to, so why would you report?” the journalist asked. “Because it would be career-defining or career-ending. Life was different then.”
In addition to this, there are more formal avenues for victims of abuse and harassment to seek justice. “Complaints procedures have improved and people are more willing to complain,” says Rutter. The Independent Complaints Mechanism, launched in 2018, is often criticized as opaque, cumbersome and slow-moving, but it remains a step in the right direction.
Similarly, political parties and parliamentary authorities are still far from perfect, but they are getting better at dealing with offenders. Take the Conservative peer Lord Ranger, who was suspended from the House of Lords for three weeks and banned from all parliamentary bars for a year after drunkenly harassing two women in Strangers Bar in Parliament.
“If you go back two, three, five years, he might have had a little chat in the lobby with the House whip and nothing would have come of it,” the lawmaker said. “Nobody would have heard about it. He would have been the subject of rumours about ‘another idiot’ but it would never have become public knowledge.”
This leads to the slightly odd conclusion that, all things considered, it might not necessarily be bad news that the parliament is seen as a hotbed of creeps and con artists.
All of the people interviewed for this article have worked in and around Westminster for more than a decade, and none could say with confidence that MPs’ behaviour has gotten worse. Rather, they all seem to believe that higher standards, a changing culture and more efficient oversight are to blame for this proliferation of misconduct.
Still, it’s hard to be entirely optimistic about the future of Westminster. First, it’s surprising that, despite all these changes, so many politicians still decided to behave badly – many of them probably knowing there would be consequences, but still tried.
As a result, it will take a lot of work and effort to meaningfully improve Parliament, and it’s not clear that a Labour government would rise to the challenge. “Starmer himself is clearly a decent guy,” the journalist said.
“We’ve all been trying to get under his skin but we haven’t made much progress. But I don’t think this is about the party leadership. It’s more about people at the bottom of the party, how the floor whip responds and what people are allowed to do. It’s a more nuanced issue than ‘let’s do a deep clean’.”
The fact that the Prime Minister welcomed Natalie Elphick into the party before she apologised for supporting her ex-husband Charlie Elphick, a former MP who was convicted of sex offences, may not inspire confidence in many. After all, this parliament has shown that it takes a lot for MPs to learn to behave well.
Perhaps these are the last years of the old era, and all the bad guys have finally been ousted, having received their just punishment, but it is too early to celebrate. Westminster cannot now rest easy and assume that things have changed forever. There is still much work to be done.