Lib Dem Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper has called on Boris Johnson to tell Neil Parish, the Conservative MP alleged to have watched adult content on his phone in the Commons Chamber, to resign as MP for Tiverton and Honiton in Devon.
While Parish himself has said that he will do so if an enquiry into his behaviour finds against him, Daisy says that in any other workplace, an issue like this would be resolved speedily.
If Boris Johnson had any shred of decency left, he would tell Neil Parish to resign immediately.
“In any other workplace this would count as gross misconduct and the person responsible would lose their job. Parliament should be no different.
“We don’t need to insult the women MPs who witnessed this with a lengthy investigation. All his bosses need to do is ask for his devices and look at his viewing history, this isn’t rocket science.”
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9 Comments
“In any other workplace this would count as gross misconduct and the person responsible would lose their job.”
In any other workplace there would be an internal investigation, during which time the employee concerned would be suspended. If they are found to have committed the offence, then their employment may well be terminated.
No other employer would order an employee to immediately resign without due process.
I agree that his devices need to be looked ta as part of the investigation, but we should await the outome of that rather than pre-empt it.
Could this just be the chance of a 2nd. North Shropshire for our LD neighbours to the West? The timing of a by-election with campaigning help from us could come nicely after the effort we’re currently putting in to our election for the new Somerset unitary authority.
BJ cannot tell Mr Parish to have the decency to resign, because he’d then have to do the same.
Well, he’s admitted it now and resigned, which takes the issue away from the Tory whips and Boris Johnson.
It’s a big ask to take Tiverton and Honiton, but not impossible especially given the political context.
It seems Mr Parish has more decency than BJ.
This seat is winnable if we put in the sort of effort that was put in in North Shropshire. We need to start today.
Mick is right. However tacky Parish’s behaviour, it (probably) was not law breaking. If there was anything like proportionate sanctions, Johnson and other MPs should have been out of parliament some time ago.
Honiton has a similar political profile to North Shropshire, but there we had more chance to be better prepared. In North Shropshire, the graft and veniality fed into an overall narrative. This case less so and this time, even the Tories are unlikely to drop in an unknown who has little knowledge of the area. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how Labour play the seat: will they back down or as second place in the last three elections press to be the focus of opposition to the Tories?
This is another pro-Brexit seat like N Shrop where our Remain Alliance and Revoke stance in 2019 wrecked our possibilities.
Given we had almost zero support from Leavers nationally in 2019, we can conclude we got a third of the local Remain vote. Very decent.
I believe that is our real base for this election: we start on 30%+ of the vote.
Look back to elections in 97, 01, 05 10, we were in the thirties. And had strong support from poorer Euro-sceptic voters.
That support was alienated by Coalition, then Remain Alliance.
We have a real chance to recover support here and win, provided we focus on issues of importance to electors, not our own perennial obsessions: please no time wasting on PR, UBI, Land Value Tax etc
We are not strong in local politics, but much stronger than Labour. We should go all out for this.
@Martin
“However tacky Parish’s behaviour, it (probably) was not law breaking.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/30/disgraced-tory-mp-neil-parish-broke-law-by-watching-porn-in-commons
“The act states that: “If any indecent matter is publicly displayed the person making the display and any person causing or permitting the display to be made shall be guilty of an offence.”
It adds that: “Any matter which is displayed in or so as to be visible from any public place shall, for the purposes of this section, be deemed to be publicly displayed.””
Nonconformistradical:
There are some questions about what was going on. Obviously we do not know what was shown nor how it was shown. At worst this could be misogynistic intimidatory behaviour, which would account for the complaints, but we do not know this. More generally, it is becoming clear that there is a shocking incidence of acts of misogyny in the Commons. Some have noted a febrile, macho culture that is endemic to the political system and the confrontational layout of the Commons.