The reputation of the British Conservative Party as an unlikely redoubt of sex-mad libertines has been burnished after a series of lurid revelations by a senior lawmaker in The Times of London. Highlights include a member of parliament getting rescued at 4 a.m. from the clutches of 12 naked women in a brothel they had been taken to by KGB agents, and a special adviser to the government going to an orgy and “taking a crap on another person’s head.”
The extraordinary revelations are contained in the unputdownable memoir of Simon Hart, who served as chief whip under the ill-starred Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who suffered a record defeat in the 2024 U.K. elections.
Government whips are responsible for enforcing party discipline and, as such, are traditionally privy to jaw-dropping political gossip. Individual politicians also sometimes turn to whips as a last resort to extract them from sticky situations.
The party is the world’s oldest—and historically most electorally successful—political organization but in Hart’s telling, the past is not even prologue. Hart’s book Ungovernable portrays a chaotic and ill-disciplined governing party, with individuals spiraling out of control as it approaches its inevitable doom.
Hart oversaw a near-record 15 Conservative Members of Parliament resign, defect, or have the whip suspended, including Matt Hancock, a senior lawmaker who was suspended for making an unauthorized appearance on the TV reality show I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, a celebrity version of Survivor.
However it is the sexual peccadilloes of his colleagues which have inevitably attracted the most attention.
In one incident, Hart recounts how a “House employee” [as in the House of Commons] was fired after it emerged they had gone “to a party dressed as [notorious sex offender] Jimmy Savile and ended up having sex with a blow-up doll.”
On another occasion, one of Hart’s team, described as a “younger whip,” turns up to work “with a broken rib, apparently the result of an energetic night with his new girlfriend.” Hart comments, “Oh, to be young again!”
Hart also gives an insight into how the party checks new candidates standing for election, saying that “a fair few fail the vetting process” for sending “d--- pictures.”
He adds that one wannabe candidate claimed “that a photo of his penis had been sent in error to a contact, rather than his doctor as intended.”
The excuse was not believed and the person was not selected.
He also describes how politicians are actively warned to be on the lookout for honeytraps, and says he received a security brief advising him and his team that on no account should they “engage in a chat with any unusually beautiful Chinese women (or men, I guess).”
In this context, one minister tells them, “If you think you are punching above your weight, ask yourself why.”
Prime Minister Sunak was voted out of Downing Street on July 5, 2024, after leading the Conservatives to an historic defeat at the hands of Labour’s Keir Starmer.
