When
a Tory sex scandal isn’t a sex scandal
Cameron’s
culture secretary was ‘hanging around with a prostitute,’ but the
tabloids didn’t touch the story.
By TOM MCTAGUE AND
ALEX SPENCE 4/13/16, 8:49 PM CET
LONDON — It’s
the sort of story that would normally get the British tabloids worked
up for days: a senior Conservative politician caught in a
relationship with a sex worker.
But John
Whittingdale appeared to have held on to his job with barely a peep
from Fleet Street Wednesday, despite admitting that he had a
six-month relationship with a sex worker he had met on Match.com.
David Cameron defended his culture secretary and rejected calls from
the opposition Labour party for him to be stripped of his
responsibility for media policy.
A Downing Street
spokesman said Whittingdale is “a single man who is entitled to a
private life” and that the prime minister had “full confidence in
him.”
‘The
press definitely pulled its punches’ — Labour party
source
It helped
Whittingdale that the newspapers, in a rare display of collective
restraint, largely dismissed the revelations as unworthy of their
indignation.
Labour sources were
aghast, arguing that Whittingdale had been spared because newspaper
editors didn’t want to upset a man with power over policies that
affect them, and who has been seen by some as a long-term political
ally.
“The press
definitely pulled its punches,” a senior party source said. “Look,
this is a senior politician hanging around with a prostitute in the
Houses of Parliament. Of course it’s a story.”
This was the classic
Westminster sex scandal scandal turned on its head.
Whittingdale’s
startling admission didn’t come in the way that politicians’
embarrassing secrets are normally revealed to the world: namely, in
the pages of one of Fleet Street’s red tops. Several newspapers
were aware of the relationship months ago, but decided not to run a
story about it.
Instead of the usual
muckrakers, it was a little-known, crowdfunded journalism website,
Byline, that broke the story on Sunday night. Byline’s scoop was
largely ignored by other media outlets until the BBC’s Newsnight
program picked it up Tuesday, prompting the statement by
Whittingdale.
The revelation
reignited an old debate about journalists intruding into the private
lives of public figures, but with the usual roles bizarrely reversed.
On one side, tabloid
journalists talked the story down, insisting there was no public
interest in raking over Whittingdale’s private conduct. On the
other, critics who campaign for a more scrupulous, less intrusive
press insisted Byline was right to run the story and accused the
newspapers of a cover-up for holding back.
If it was anyone
else, the critics argued, the newspapers wouldn’t hesitate to
publish. They only took it easy on Whittingdale because he’s the
minister for media policy, and protecting him was in their corporate
interests.
Whittingdale was
accused of a conflict of interest, since he would preside over media
issues that would impact the publishers holding embarrassing
information on file about him.
A prostitute waits
for clients on a street in Nice
Sword of Damocles
Labour pushed that
line Wednesday, insisting that Whittingdale, a veteran Thatcherite
Tory who favors light-touch regulation and reforming the BBC — an
issue on which he has common cause with many newspaper editors and
owners — had been compromised.
Chris Bryant, the
Shadow leader of the House of Commons, said the press had been “quite
deliberately holding a sword of Damocles over John Whittingdale” by
not publishing the story in an attempt to exert leverage over him.
Privately, Labour
are convinced the press, who they consider to be overwhelmingly
hostile to their leader Jeremy Corbyn, gave Whittingdale a free pass
because he was considered an “ally” in their fight against
stricter regulation of the newspaper industry after phone hacking.
However, there was
an acceptance that some of the wilder conspiracy theories were wide
of the mark. “The press could not have known at the time [the first
newspapers investigated Whittingdale’s relationship] that he would
go on to be culture secretary,” the same source told POLITICO.
“No-one thought he would be culture secretary. And he finished the
relationship with her before he was a minister.”
‘In
the end it couldn’t get past the lawyers’ — Fleet
Street source
The source added:
“You’ve also got to accept the atmosphere [after phone hacking]
was one of extreme caution. Newspapers were too scared to do prurient
stories like this — just look at how boring a lot of them were.”
Publicly,
journalists mocked Labour’s allegations of a cover up. Privately,
reporters of some newspapers were unhappy the story had not been
pursued.
“He was chair of
the Culture, Media and Sport select committee — he was clearly
involved in the debate about press regulation,” a senior Fleet
Street source told POLITICO. “We did not want to turn him over if
we didn’t have to. The fact that he was single and important pushed
it back over the line, just. In the end it couldn’t get past the
lawyers.”
There were
suggestions Wednesday that Downing Street was angry with Whittingdale
for failing to tell them about the relationship that had potential to
cause controversy.
The prime minister’s
spokesman hinted he would like to have been told earlier. Asked if
Cameron thought he should have been made aware earlier, the spokesman
said: “John Whittingdale’s view was that this was in the past,
and had been dealt with.”
The spokesman also
refused to say whether the prime minister thought it was right for
the BBC to have run the story in the first place. “That’s a
decision for the BBC and others to make,” the spokesman said.
Whittingdale was
also facing questions about a trip with the former girlfriend to
Amsterdam, paid for by a media company, that he did not declare on
the Parliamentary register. The minister insisted that he did not
break any rules because the value of the trip was less than the £600
threshold for disclosure.
Some MPs were
skeptical. One MP told POLITICO: “I really don’t buy his story
that the reason he didn’t declare the Amsterdam trip was that it
only cost £540-odd quid. It’s because he didn’t want to.”
Authors:
Tom McTague and
Alex Spence
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário