HOWZAT

Jellicoe’s resignation (he volunteered the truth about himself to Heath) is one of the few examples of unextracted honesty in the modern history of political scandal. Many people think Heath overreacted in accepting this resignation. The late Nicholas Fairbairn, Margaret Thatcher’s Scottish Solicitor-General, got off lightly in 1981. Few ministers would survive in office if their teenage daughter was reported to have discovered their divorced dad’s spurned lover allegedly hanging from a lamp-post outside the family’s home. Happily the suicide attempt (whose circumstances were disputed) was unsuccessful. The press sensation faded but a year later Thatcher had to let Fairbairn go after a series of personal and professional misjudgments.

A year later in 1983 she was quicker to act when the Tories’ October post-election-victory conference was rocked by newspaper revelations that her former party chairman, Cecil Parkinson (married), had just fathered a child, Flora, by his secretary, Sara Keays. Under pressure from Keays Parkinson had already told Thatcher about their affair (by then over). The less glamorous job she had given him (Trade and Industry Secretary: he had been expected to become Foreign Secretary) reflected that. With Keays (and her father) holding a metaphorical pistol to his head, he volunteered the story to the press. Keays said he had broken a promise to marry her. Flora has never lived with her father. Keays has never married. Parkinson (now Lord Parkinson) has stayed with his wife. Many thought he might have succeeded Thatcher as party leader, but for this affair.

Brushing over the affair between John Major and Edwina Currie (which ended in 1988 but never affected either career because it was not discovered by the press until its revelation in 2002) we move to 1992 when the then-Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown (married), whose affair with the (separated) Tricia Howard had finished some years earlier, volunteered the story. He did so because details were contained in documents stolen from the safe of his solicitor, Andrew Phillips (now Lord Phillips) and the thief had tried to sell them to the News of the World. Immediately dubbed “Paddy Pantsdown” by The Sun, Ashdown did not appear to be damaged by the publicity. Tricia Howard is unusual among MPs’ ex-lovers in never having sold her story.

In the same year the then Heritage Secretary, David Mellor (married), did not (as is often assumed) fall from office after the revelation of his affair with Antonia de Sancha. John Major “stood by” his minister, but had to drop him when new criticism arose of Mellor’s family holiday with the daughter of one of Yassir Arafat’s main funders. “From toe-job to no job” said The Sun, but such details as the toe-sucking allegations and the “Chelsea strip” were media inventions. They have have passed into folklore, irreversibly. Mellor later lost his seat and went on to a media career.

Tim Yeo, now a prominent member of the Tory front bench, lived to fight another day in politics. Over Christmas 1993 his affair with a Hackney Tory councillor, Julia Stent, broke in the News of the World when her child, by Yeo, was six months old. Yeo and his wife had already reconciled themselves to the affair, which was over, and Yeo was supporting the child. Stent was subjected to a torment-by-media as the press pack sought “her side of the story ”. John Major pledged loyalty to his junior minister, but Yeo was effectively sacked as a minister by his Tory constituency association, whose condemnation Major could not ignore. He survived as an MP.

So did Steve “5-mistresses” Norris (“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, Minister” said The Sunday Times) who kept his ministerial job too, nobody really knows how. This 1993 press sensation had been among the first to test John Major’s infamous “Back to Basics” policy, interpreted by the press-officer Tim Collins (now a prominent Tory front-bencher) but never by Major, as being about morality. Norris’s wife separated from him.

In 1995 Robert Hughes, a junior Tory whip (married), resigned when his affair with a secretary hit the news. Tory MP Richard Spring (divorced) resigned as a parliamentary private secretary when the News of the World reported his “three-in-a-bed romp” with a Sunday-school teacher, “trembling Odette Nightingale”. Piers Merchant (married) held on as a Tory MP after kissing a pretty girl in a park (there was a hidden Sun photographer), and David Ashby held on (for a while) as a (married — for a while) Tory MP after stories involving a male friend, a double bed and a hotel in France . . .

And in 1997 the electorate put paid to the media’s right to call Tory Members “Government MPs”. As in August 1997, a new Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, packed his bags for a holiday with his then-wife, Margaret — a holiday which was never to happen — the fun began again, but with a new crew. The story continues.

Great Parliamentary Scandals: Five Centuries of Calumny, Smear and Innuendo by Matthew Parris and Kevin Maquire, Robson Books, £12.99