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.


Gareth Roberts is a screenwriter and novelist, best known for his work on Doctor Who.

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