What’s in a name?

 

The latest scandal in our governing (sic: “governing” comes very close to being a misnomer) Conservative Party involves the Deputy Chief Whip, one Chris Pincher. Mr Pincher was appointed to his post despite having resigned in 2017 from a similar position because he made unwanted sexual advances to a colleague. The Whips’ office is responsible for maintaining party discipline. Any MP who has a complaint (for example of being sexually molested by a colleague) registers the complaint with the Whips’ office. One might think therefore that anybody appointed as a Whip would have demonstrably high standards of conduct and probity. But not in the government of Prime Minister Johnson.

 

Mr Pincher has fallen from grace because on Thursday evening he became very drunk at the Carlton Club (the Conservatives’ private members club in St. James’s). He resigned that evening because he had, in his words, “embarrassed himself.” It seems that his embarrassment involved sexually touching two men. My newspaper this morning quoted a “Downing Street source” dismissing the matter as being “on the level of somebody’s bum being pinched,” as if pinching another person’s bum is acceptable behaviour (I would not be surprised if it were in 10 Downing Street). I wonder if this source considered that the person (s)he was defending is the appropriately names Mr Pincher. The political of Mr Bum Pincher will probably soon be over.