Those of you who read the foreign news (in the US) may have come across several articles in the Grauniad discussing the fact, just revealed, that an undercover policeman not only infiltrated a particularly harmless environmental activist organisation, but slept with several of the female activists. Another police undercover agent actually married an activist and they had two children before he broke down and confessed that he wasn’t who he had said he was.
Well, after two stories about policemen not being able to keep their trousers zipped, we heard yesterday that the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasury spokesman for the opposition Labour party) resigned his post for “personal reasons”. Normally if they themselves have transgressed they say that they are resigning to “spend more time with their family”. This morning we awoke to the news that he no longer has a family with which to spend time with as his former police bodyguard from the time he was Home Secretary has had (perhaps “is having”) an affair with Johnson’s wife and she has left him.
One wonders how many more cases of this nature are simmering just under the saucepan lid. There have been three undercover officers identified who infiltrated peaceful activist groups, two of which (the two men) got sexually involved with the people they were spying on. And a politician who (frankly) is one of the few Labour politicians I have time for as he is a hard worker, very personable, and doesn’t act as if being in the Cabinet made his sh*t not to stink, is poleaxed by his police bodyguard and his marriage ruined.
It used to be that bent coppers were limited to physical violence against prisoners and taking bribes. Now it seems they are becoming studs as well.
Later note; Guido Fawkes is now reporting that Johnson’s successor investigated Johnson’s private life and discovered that Johnson himself was having an affair with a civil servant. This doesn’t make it right for the bodyguard to have an affair with Johnson’s wife, but it certainly shows that what’s sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander. Those old wives knew whereof they spoke. And of course, it’s really creepy that the new Shadow Chancellor might have been implicated in the discoveries which led to Johnson’s resignation, if that is true.
I wouldn’t believe the loathsome “Fawkes” collective if they were to tell me that the sun rose in the east every morning. Strange how they’re so quick to stick the knife into Alan Johnson over his private life, and yet their nasty atavistic chum Nadine Dorries gets away scot-free after similar allegations about hers.
Well, while he’s a nasty SOB, the difficulty is that the Opposition doesn’t have an equivalently nasty SOB who is both well-connected enough and witty enough to compete.
Nadine Dorries doesn’t strike me as someone in whose constituency I would care to live.
I just remember the tail end of the last Tory government, with illegitimate children, at least one sad case of autoerotic asphyxiation (probable), and lots of trousering of cash in brown envelopes. The Tories and LibDems are still too new in Government to get any really juicy scandals going. Look at David Laws, whom everyone is panting to get into Cabinet again. Other MPs are getting jailed for similar transgressions. I suppose that since no one wanted Gordon Brown (with his own juicy revelations) back as PM they are giving Cameron and Clegg an easier ride. Let’s wait a year and see.
I wouldn’t be surprised, tho, if Johnson had indeed had an affair. However, two wrongs don’t make a right and this situation is murky enough as it is. Politicians are, alas, all too human and although we elect people we think should be on pedestals, we are still surprised when they fall off (or jump off) those pedestals later on.