Bagehot | The Palace of Pestminster

摘要

IT WAS only a matter of time before Hurricane Harvey reached the Palace of Westminster. The Weinstein storm has ripped through a succession of institutions that combine male power with blurred lines between professional and social life. Few institutions combine these two things quite as explosively as the Houses of Parliament. Now it has struck with a vengeance, shaking Brexit off the front pages and even raising questions about the future of the government. Sir Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, has resigned on the grounds that his past personal conduct has "fallen below the high standards that we require of the armed forces". A senior civil servant is conducting an inquiry into the conduct of two other ministers: Damian Green, the deputy prime minister, who denies accusations that he made unwanted advances to a woman 30 years his junior, and Mark Gamier, a trade minister, who nicknamed his assistant "sugar tits" and dispatched her to buy sex toys. Unnamed people in politics are accused of far worse. Bex Bailey, a Labour activist, has said that she was raped by a "party figure" and then discouraged from reporting it by Labour apparatchiks. The Westminster gossip mill, never idle even at the quietest of times, is whirring madly, aided by leaked party dossiers on MPS, insinuating photographs in newspapers and snippets from private WhatsApp groups.