April 5, 2024 - 2:30pm
What a silly Willy. That’s William Wragg, Conservative MP for Hazel Grove in Greater Manchester, and Vice Chairman of the 1922 Committee.
It emerged last night that Wragg had sent “intimate pictures” of himself to a stranger on gay dating app Grindr. But that’s not the main issue at hand, as it were. Using the threat of blackmail, said stranger then impelled Wragg to hand over the personal phone numbers of Westminster colleagues. These unnamed politicians and parliamentary staff were then sent flirty texts, and — incredibly — two MPs responded with photos of their own bits and bobs.
Whether this was the work of small-time pranksters or a hostile foreign government is as yet unclear. Perhaps there is a filing cabinet somewhere in the Kremlin marked “Penises of the British Parliament”, just waiting to be filled.
You’d think that this would be an instantly sackable offence, or a matter for an immediate resignation, but we learn today that Wragg will not have the Tory whip removed. He had already announced he was standing down at the next election which, like the many other Tory MPs doing the same, is merely stepping out of the path of an oncoming bullet.
“Ministers and colleagues — including victims — are sympathetic,” we are told, which makes them sound positively saintly. What on earth does Wragg have that makes him so lovably forgivable? It’s not on display, as far as I can tell.
This constant stream of Tory sex scandals — some minor and amusing, others less so — is reminiscent of the last years of John Major’s government. This time round, however, instead of the hard analogue reality of David Mellor “romping” with his mistress in a Chelsea strip (a detail that was totally invented as it turned out) we have the digital world of dating apps.
At least Brooks Newmark and Chris Bryant are old chaps, who grew up in the pre-connected world, and so have the excuse of age. Wragg is only 36, which means he was still a child when the internet became ubiquitous. How are young(ish) politicians so stupid as to fall for dating app scams?
This is most likely what a gay character in a novel by Angus Wilson calls “the horrible horn”. The male groin overriding the male mind may be a cliché, but it’s one of those clichés that’s true. It’s doubtful Wragg or one of the other sexting victims would, for example, send a thousand pounds to a Nigerian businessman to administer their huge win in the Spanish lottery. But when the carrot of orgasm is dangled before some men, they lose whatever sense they were born with. Many grow out of this — but many do not.
I thank my lucky stars I’m so suburban and “respectable” that the very idea of transmitting my scrotum through the ether fills me with horror. But there are legions of men doing this. The gay world, without the stabilising factor of female sexuality, is obviously going to be the most likely source of it. Take women out of the sex equation and men behave – well, like men. (I very much doubt whether a single female MP has transmitted an image of her breasts to a stranger.)
What does this tell us about the current calibre of our elected representatives? Mainly, that they are rubber-stampers, Lobby fodder, clueless and witless. There are probably about nine or 10 who seem to take a productive, reasonable attitude, and far fewer in the actual Cabinet. The 300 new Labour MPs will include horrors we can only guess.
In addition, these online sex scandals will inevitably become more of a major issue in the future. The male Cabinet ministers of the 2040s are, I guarantee you, performing all manner of shenanigans on the internet right this very minute, which with the future of tech will likely be instantly retrievable.
There needs to be a far tougher line taken on this. The security implications are obvious. In the meantime, politicians really ought to put their honourable members away.
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SubscribeThe gay world, without the stabilising factor of female sexuality, is obviously going to be the most likely source of it.
Bezos!
Sir Norman Fry is alive and well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REpNTi-9oRQ
Very funny video; thanks for that.
LOL
Very funny!
“Conservatives” are a joke. The slippery slope is real.
I don’t really care what consensual activities MPs get up to in private….
But of course the boundaries between private and public are almost non-existent nowadays and the Internet is like the Wild West.
What amazes me is the sheer naiveté of people who apparently don’t realise they are like sitting ducks online and, unfortunately, can’t just carry on like the average punter.
I’d have thought that the salary was worth it to keep percy in their pocket, but I suppose that with the approaching Armageddon, they don’t really care about any of it that much anymore.
I would very much question the intelligence of a public figure sending d**k pics.
Oh, I agree, but if we went back through everybody’s Internet past, I do wonder how many people ( or rather men) would actually come up with a clean ‘CV’ nowadays?
True. Clearly the line in the sand has shifted.
I have the same question about private figure
I opened my Grindr (I know a lot of trolls) and unfortunately it wasn’t just d**k.
Interesting choice of place to shove your ballot paper tho, I suppose.
Wasn’t Boris Johnson finally brought down by his denial that he knew that a male Tory MP had pinched another man’s bum? Apparently that was de trop, whereas it’s apparentlyOK for male Tory MPs to send pictures of their family jewels to a complete stranger on a ‘gay’ dating app as Sunak has not admonished or cancelled him.
It was Wragg that set Pincher up, deliberately in order to get at Johnson. He’s Dougie Smith’s b1tch, that’s why he’s being treated so leniently.
What a nest of vipers!
The problem with any public sector work is that it squashes individuality and demands conformity. This means that anyone who even hints at bucking the system remains either stuck at low-level work or ends up leaving out of sheer frustration.
I’m sure not alone in constantly amazed what some younger folks will share electronically. Cleary a generation gap in this sort of behaviour, and grateful for that I think.
But standing back we should prepare and be aware malign actors will be already at work looking to undermine key elections in many Western countries during 2024. The sophistication will have moved on from the flood of Bots c2016, but AI fake images/messages open up a whole other avenue. There will also be the more obvious honeytraps and secret payments rackets too. The FSB will almost certainly have a whole raft of media avenues it’s got compromised. That’ll include journalists so worth us all just having that antennae well tuned to help spot the potential to be ‘played’ in a crucial year for us all.
don’t say “suburban and ‘respectable'” in that self-deprecating sort of way when what you mean is “mentally healthy and sexually continent”
Nothing will happen to this pervert because it does not matter, the Tory Party is finished, and this government is irrelevant as is Wragg.
If only!
“Mainly, that they are rubber-stampers, Lobby fodder, clueless and witless.”
This is correct – but don’t be so quick to ignore the immorality of sexual libertinism while focusing on the realpolitik stupidity of it. They aren’t disconnected. Failing to respect rules, structure, norms in one aspect of life is going to find some expression in others, too.
Hard to be surprised by this, neither the monumental stupidity, nor the spectacular lack of judgement nor the getting away without repercussions.
And there was me thinking my depraved sex life ruled out politics as an option.
More likely get you fast tracked to a ministerial post. Minister for Family Values perhaps?
Hurrah!
Sold his mates up the swanny, for the sake of a d*c pic. No sympathy.
Wragg has done immense wrong. For a man of 36 and an MP it’s incredible he doesn’t know the basic rule of the Internet: don’t post anything you don’t want others to see.
For this folly he threw his colleagues under the bus and exposed the government to potential bad actors.
I think that a policy needs to be made for all MPs and civil servants. Sharing colleagues private details is an offence immediately sackable with no recourse to further payment.
The idea that Wragg will stand down with a parliamentary pension is ridiculous after what he’s done.