Boris Johnson will overlook anything if you’re loyal

The Pincher scandal isn’t about sex. It’s much worse: it’s about a government so tarnishing to reputations that being tarnished already makes you a perfect fit.

Boris Johnson denies knowing Chris Pincher had a reputation despite calling him “handsy.” Picture: AFP.

A few years ago, I was commissioned to write an article for the German newspaper Bild about why British politicians were so sexually peculiar. Having heard stories about Berlin nightclubs, I was honestly quite taken aback. “Wow,” I thought. “Even the Germans think this?”

That was the week, though, when a male member of the House of Lords had been pictured on the front of The Sun wearing a salmon-pink bra and a woman’s studded leather jacket at a party where he was reported to have snorted cocaine with prostitutes. So I could sort of see where they were coming from.

I mention this in mild rebuttal to those who think this week’s Chris Pincher story is something new, or that we can draw a direct link between the former Conservative deputy chief whip, now suspended over groping allegations, and the sexual behaviour of Boris Johnson himself.

True, Amber Rudd once suggested that the PM was “not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening”, and I don’t think this was just because she had seen the state of his car. Still, his reputation has always been one of sexual incontinence rather than aggression.

Although, “reputation” is wrong in that sentence, isn’t it? One might as well say the north Atlantic has “a reputation” for being a bit cold and wet. All the same, I don’t think that particular link is there, however much his enemies might seek to make it. Grim sex and Westminster have always gone together, horribly or ludicrously, or both. There have always been scandals for the press to cover and for the whips to try to cover up. None of this is nice or OK. But none of it is new.

Chris Pincher has been suspended as Conservative Deputy Chief Whip over groping claims.

Neither are allegations about Pincher himself. Being a spokesman for the Johnson ministry has never been a position overburdened with dignity, but the last few days have been a new low. “I am not aware that he was made aware of specific claims,” burbled Therese Coffey of the boss on Sunday, which is a sentence to treasure. Not least because “specific” is awfully, well, specific. By yesterday, the education minister Will Quince had upgraded that to Johnson being unaware of “any serious specific allegation”, meaning that the Fleet Street hunt to identify what the PM regards as unserious, non-specific groping is definitely on. Dominic Cummings, a man who seems to view his own role in Downing Street with all the detachment of a family dog now indignant that there’s a large poo in the living room, says that Johnson used to joke about “Pincher by name, Pincher by nature”. In other words, of course he knew. He just didn’t care.

His not caring, though, is not directly linked to his own sexual morals. Get past that. Actually, when it comes to appointing people, there’s a lot Johnson doesn’t care about. Reputation, integrity, intelligence, general ability; stuff like that. Pincher was there for the same reason that a good double handful of unimpressive ministers are also there. Which is that he was prepared, unflinchingly, to toe the line.

Liz Truss hangs on out of sheer personal ambition. Picture: AFP.

In this, Johnson is the opposite of his predecessor Theresa May, who ceaselessly sought to bring her critics into cabinet, including Johnson himself. Indeed, she even reappointed Pincher as a whip, despite rumours, precisely because he had influence with the more Brexity parts of the party that she did not. Johnson, by contrast, never does this. For all the random chaos that characterises so much of what he does, there is a streak of incongruous steel when it comes to handing out jobs. He appoints his supporters and almost nobody else. Which means, increasingly, that he’s scraping the bottom of an already well-scraped barrel.

Granted, it’s not wholly down to him. The moment he landed the job, the likes of Rudd, Jeremy Hunt and Philip Hammond simply threw up their hands and wandered off. If cheerleading a Johnson government withered a Tory soul back then, though, think how much harder it is now. Today, it is not only the self-harm of a hard Brexit that must be squared off with your conscience. It is also the proroguing of parliament, the partying through lockdown, the mad and brutal Rwanda policy, the facing down of international law. This is a Conservative government that breaks things, which is definitely not what conservatism used to be about.

Michael Gove seems to cling on in a spirit of self-loathing Sisyphean repentance.

Now that the threat of Corbynism has passed, particularly, it’s hard to see what they get out of it. There are those who hang around and grit their teeth out of sheer personal ambition, such as Ben Wallace and Liz Truss, and Johnson’s wariness of them is palpable. There are also those who seem to be clinging on in a spirit of self-loathing Sisyphean repentance – Michael Gove, Sajid Javid, maybe Rishi Sunak – and I bet they baffle him.

Clearly, he’s much more comfortable with the more malleable, the less competent, the flawed, the gratefully over-promoted. You know who they are. He certainly knows who they are. Probably they even know themselves.

With so much open revolt in the party, the PM’s options are even more limited. Yesterday Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chairwoman, wrote to him to ask what he knew about Pincher, and when. “I would write to the Tory party chair if there was one,” she noted, viciously, with Oliver Dowden still unreplaced after throwing in the towel over the recent by-election disasters.

Who can Johnson appoint next? What weird, alarming or downright politically disastrous flaw will that person have? Because you know there will be one. Because otherwise, at this stage, why would they even be in the running?

This is the context in which to see Pincher. It’s not about sex. It’s about a government so tarnishing to the reputations of its own cheerleaders that being tarnished already makes you a perfect fit.

So yes, it’s indicative, and goes right to the top. But it’s not about sex. It’s much worse.

The Times