Whatever happened to political sex scandals? They were quite the rage when they involved toffs and met our apparently insatiable fixation with the aristocracy. Like spy stories, the really fruity ones had to involve upper class betrayal.
Political scandals are about either sex or money. Labour MPs were expected to be embroiled in scandals about money, because they didn’t have any. Tory scandals were about sex because it was assumed they weren’t getting any. But these days Tories are after the money too.
The photo of the headless man
It was the glamour of the ‘60s sex scandals which first drew your correspondent to politics. After the crusty, dusty 1950s, for an eager young teenager the idea of scantily clad lovelies draped around toffs’ swimming pools suggested a different and more glamourous world. There was the privileged backdrop, wild parties beyond even what to that point had been this young blood’s imaginings, (and those imaginings had been pretty fervid). Then came the sensational Duchess of Argyle court case. The recent TV series A very British Scandal captured the period beautifully. The photos showed what? Really? Oh, the desperate frustration of never being able to see them, masked man and all.
Death as part of an establishment cover-up
But Profumo and what followed represented a rupture with the past and introduced a more exciting new world. He was the secretary of state for war, representing both the aristocracy and extreme wealth, and he was sharing a mistress from the other side of the tracks with – it turned out – the Soviet military attaché.
New freedoms must have seemed profoundly exciting
When John Profumo strolled out after dinner at Cliveden and found Christine Keeler so enticingly arrayed beside the pool, both knew the rules. Profumo was immensely wealthy, an untouchable member of the establishment, yet at a time when society’s old mores were breaking down. Keeler was of a generation beginning to enjoy new freedoms, which, for one as hide-bound as Profumo, must have seemed profoundly exciting. But beyond the game both knew where the real power lay, and the control.
Then there was the mysterious Stephen Ward, who glided between the worlds of wealth, privilege, sexual excess, the underworld, and a newly emerging young working class with ambitions. Ward conveniently died in mysterious circumstances during his trial for pimping. The cause of death was apparently suicide, though with quite enough rumour to suggest he had to die as part of an establishment cover-up.
So, the scandal involved everything an excitement-starved public could ever want. Christine Keeler, the femme fatale in all this, was imprisoned by a vengeful establishment and sank into obscurity, eminently disposable.
Sex involves power and the exchange of it
The sex scandals which helped bring down the Major government already showed how society had changed. The Tory MPs embroiled there were all on the make, and what few toffs were involved had already lost their veneer of otherness. Of course, sexual adventures often involve power and the exchange of it. Liz Truss came into politics via an illicit affair with a Tory backbencher, Mark Field, who successfully ‘mentored’ her into a safe seat. Both parties in these affairs – ‘all’ parties perhaps I should say in the racier examples – are usually aware of the power exchange, and an enjoyment of it and its control are often an integral part of the sex. But though what happens in a sexual relationship can’t vary that much, the nature of the power and control echo the changes in society and in its politics.
By the time of the Major government’s scandals, the old certainties were gone, and a new brasher world was already visible.
No glamour, just a glimpse into a crumbled world
But sex scandals today… like so much in life, they aren’t what they used to be. We live under a government which has blatantly given up any realistic control over political events, and that impotence seems reflected in the nature of its scandals too. We need only think (if we must) of Matt Hancock in that clinch in an office corridor.
MPs are no longer glamorous figures; they’re more likely to be objects of fun, relying on bullying for their droite de seigneur. The apparent glamour of the 1960s brought the authentic whiff of an old society decaying before our eyes. But today’s sex scandals are merely a grubby voyeurism into an already crumbled world we recognise only too easily.
