Chris Pincher: The scandal of the Conservative MP accused of sexual harassment puts pressure on Boris Johnson | International

The honesty of Boris Johnson has once again been called into question this Tuesday, when a senior official accused the Prime Minister of being untrue about his prior knowledge of deputy Chris Pincher, the protagonist of the latest scandal in the Conservative Party.

Hours after Johnson passed, a month ago, the internal censure motion in the conservative parliamentary group over the Downing Street party scandal during confinement, Pincher explained to anyone who wanted to listen that “Boris” was an irreplaceable winning machine. elections. He was accompanied by a young member of the party, whom he intended to impress almost more than his interlocutor, with the display of political analysis and the demonstration of his closeness to the prime minister.

Last Thursday, Pincher presented his resignation as number two of the conservative parliamentary group (deputy whip, or second “whip”, as those in charge of directing votes on behalf of the Government are known) after two men accused him of having tried to get their hands on them, in a drunken state that forced his colleagues to send him home in cab. It happened at the exclusive Carlton Club, on St. James Street, one of those London gentlemen’s clubs so popular with MPs Tories. In fact, it was the headquarters for years of the Conservative Party. “Dear Prime Minister. Last night I drank excessively. I embarrassed myself and other people, and that’s the last thing I want to do. I apologize to you and everyone involved,” Pincher explained in the letter he sent to Johnson. He announced his resignation as number two of the parliamentary group. Downing Street considered the incident closed. The deputy would keep the record of him and he would not be expelled from the party. So far, another little scandal of excessive alcohol and poorly controlled sexual desire.

The problem came when Johnson’s spokesmen insisted that the Prime Minister was not aware of the various accusations made against Pincher for his continuous sexual harassment of young advisers and colleagues, when last February he decided to place the deputy in such a delicate position. He desperately needed loyal allies at the forefront of parliamentary discipline, in an environment of growing rebellion and internal turmoil.

The most damaging denial

This Tuesday, the most damaging depth charge against Johnson came in the form of a surprise letter. Simon McDonald, former Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office (the highest ranking official in the department) sent a text to the chair of the Parliamentary Ethics Committee, Kathryn Stone, considered by the Johnson Government itself to be a dangerous rival wanting to catch the prime minister in some resignation. “The media has been repeating Downing Street claims for days that are false. For example, that formal complaints were never filed against Mr. Pincher. It’s not true,” McDonald accused. “Mr. Johnson was personally informed of the initiation and outcome of the investigations [realizadas en verano de 2019]”, McDonald assured in his letter. In that year, Pincher had been appointed Secretary of State for Europe and the Americas. A couple of years earlier, former rowing competitor and conservative supporter, Alex Story, accused the politician of making non-consensual approaches in which he nuzzled his neck, and assured him that he would go far in the match, “behaving like a Harvey Wenstein of balance”. And in February of this year, a deputy tory He also denounced to the group’s leadership harassment maneuvers carried out by Pincher.

It has not been so much the different episodes starring the deputy, none with a criminal offense category, but again the sensation of the way in which Johnson and his team twisted the truth, which has once again stirred the waters in the Conservative Party. In the days after the scandal broke out, different members of the Government went, like guinea pigs, to the media, to defend versions that Downing Street immediately corrected or clarified. He first claimed that Johnson was unaware of Pincher’s behavior. It was later admitted that the prime minister had been informed, but “that the complaints [contra el diputado], either they were never substantiated or they did not lead to a formal file, ”said a government spokesman. “There were formal complaints,” McDonald detailed in his letter. “And Mr. Pincher was not exonerated. Characterizing the allegations as ‘unsubstantiated’ is therefore incorrect,” he concludes.

Last April, the majority of Conservative MPs, against the initial order given by Downing Street, abstained in the vote that asked the Ethics Committee of Parliament to investigate Johnson for possible contempt, on suspicion that he had been untrue in his explanations about what he knew or did not know about the parties during confinement. That same commission, whose report is expected in the fall, now has in its hands a letter that places the prime minister in a more uncomfortable situation. Many of the conservative deputies who organized the internal censure motion at the beginning of June are already maneuvering to force a new vote before the end of the year. They should change the internal rules of the parliamentary group, which prevent the presentation of a new motion until one year after the previous one, but it is a relatively simple mechanism to carry out.

“It is clear that the Prime Minister knew the seriousness of the accusations and decided to promote this gentleman to a high position in the Government anyway. He has not wanted to do anything and has lied about what he knew ”, has accused Angela Rayner, number two of the Labor opposition.

In the midst of the continuous calamities that plague Johnson, his former adviser and Brexit ideologue, Dominic Cummings, always comes to put his foot on him. On Saturday, on his Twitter account, he recalled the joke that the prime minister repeated about the deputy in question, a couple of years before putting him in the parliamentary address: “Pincher by name, pincher by nature” (Pincher by name, pincher by nature), Johnson played with the double meaning of his ally’s last name.

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