The Westminster sex pest scandal is being handled atrociously, both by the political parties and by the media.
One of the worst aspects is the huge disparity in the way different MPs are being treated by their parties, and by the media.
In the cases of Clive Lewis and Kelvin Hopkins of the Labour Party, and Damian Green of the Tories, all three of the politicians firmly deny the allegations made against them by single accusers. Yet Kelvin Hopkins has been suspended and had the party whip removed, while Clive Lewis and Damian Green have not.
It's impossible to explain this kind of double standard. Either MPs should get suspended during investigations, or not. You can't have a completely ad hoc system where some get suspended and some don't.
In contrast to the firm denials from three MPs mentioned above, the Tory MPs Stephen Crabb and Mark Garnier have openly admitted their revolting sexual misdemeanours (Garnier laughing his unacceptable behaviour off as if it was just some kind of joke), but they haven't been suspended by their party.
How can MPs who admit their guilt get off Scot free, while (some of the) MPs who protest their innocence get punished?
Then there's the Tory MP Charlie Elphicke who has been suspended from the Tory party and reported to the police for "serious allegations". He is protesting his innocence but has been suspended from the Tory party.
However the details of the allegations against him have been kept secret, so after a day of the mainstream media fixating on the unsubstantiated and strongly denied allegations against the two Labour MPs who protest their innocence, the media barely covered the Elphicke allegations because there are no "juicy details" for them to fixate upon on.
Then there's Michael Fallon who preemptively resigned as Defence Secretary with an admission about his inappropriate behaviour with women, but he avoided getting suspended from the Tory party despite openly admitting his guilt. Theresa May decided that instead of admonishing him or suspending him, she'd actually send him a glowing love letter to tell him what a wonderful guy he is!
Then there are the two dozen plus Tory MPs who stand accused of sexual misdemeanours by their own party in the Tory Sex Pest Dossier, and the evidence that Theresa May was warned three years ago that the Tory whips collected details of sexual abuse by their MPs in order to blackmail them into compliance.
The existence of the Tory Sex Pest Dossier (which jumbles up allegations of extreme sexual misconduct with basic blackmail material like consensual affairs between Tory MPs, unusual sexual proclivities, and an apparently false claim against the MP Rory Stewart), and the statement from Theresa May's former communications director Kate Perrior explaining how the culture of blackmail was still ongoing under Theresa May's leadership are both absolutely damning, and should be one of the main elements of the scandal.
But somehow, despite the Tory whips office being at the centre of the scandal, Theresa May saw fit to actually promote her two most senior whips. She caused a storm of internal dissent in the Tory party by promoting her Chief Whip and close personal ally Gavin Williamson to replace Michael Fallon as Defence Secretary, and then she promoted his deputy Julian Smith to Chief Whip to replace him.
So not only are the Tories still studiously ignoring allegations that their whips office have used allegations of sex abuse as blackmail material for party political advantage, they've also promoted the two most senior whips at the centre of these allegations!
The Labour MP Rupa Huq is absolutely right that the House of Commons has "no real structure for complaints" and that the rules on sexual harassment are "lax if not non existent".
It's hardly surprising that sexually inappropriate behaviour has been happening in such a large workplace, especially in one with no clear rules and procedures for sexual misconduct, but the way complaints are being dealt with in completely ad hoc manner by the parties is totally unacceptable. It's created a situation where three Tory MPs who have openly admitted sexual misdemeanours have avoided suspension from their party, while one Tory and one Labour MP have been suspended despite firmly denying the accusations against them.
The next thing to note is that the press have focused much more negative attention on MPs when the allegations are made public, than when the party keeps the actual details of the allegations under wraps (as the Tories have done with the Charlie Elphicke case), which obviously gives the political parties a clear incentive to bury the details of the allegations as much as possible in order to avoid negative publicity.
Then there's what I consider to be the core element of the scandal, which is the way a very senior Tory adviser has admitted that the Tory whips office used accusations of sexual misconduct in order to blackmail MPs into compliance, rather than launching investigations and working to ensure the safety of people like journalists and junior staff as a first priority.
Yet the two men at the very centre of this scandal have actually been handed promotions!
The major problem is the way the parties are currently dealing with the cases in a bizarre "make it up as we go along" manner that punishes people who deny any wrongdoing, lets people off Scot free when they openly admit being creepy sex pests, and then actual hands promotions to two Tory whips who stand accused of having used allegations of sexual misconduct as blackmail material, rather than doing anything whatever to actually deal with the inappropriate behaviour.
The way the whole thing is being handled is an absolute farce.
If our political parties can't even deal with a scandal like this without implementing glaringly obvious double standards, and actually promoting people at the epicentre of the most damning accusations, then how on earth can they be capable of actually running the country in a decent manner?
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We all saw the absolute hysteria that the Tories and their attack dogs in the right wing press whipped up about the Labour MP Clive Lewis using the word "bitch" at a man during an obscure comedy event and then over the unacceptable comments that the new Labour MP Jared O'Mara made long before he became an MP.
The Tory MP Sarah Wollaston was one of the most high profile grandstanders, posting an article from the disgusting right-wing Guido Fawkes blog alongside a demand that Labour sack O'Mara and call a by-election in his constituency.
Wollaston's fellow Tory MP Nus Ghani even tried to trigger an emergency parliamentary debate on Clive Lewis' "bitch" comment. A move that was dismissed by the Speaker John Bercow as "wholly absurd and inappropriate".
Everyone is familiar with the expression about people in glass houses throwing stones, and when it comes to stuff like homophobia and misogyny, the likes of Sarah Wollaston and Nus Ghani knew perfectly well that the Tory party is absolutely full of bigotry when they were kicking up such a stink about Clive Lawis and Jared O'Mara.
And so it came to pass. Within a week of the Tory hysteria over Jared O'Mara it was revealed that the former Tory minister and leadership candidate Stephen Crabb had been sending sexually explicit text messages to a teenager who had applied for a job in his office (the second time he's been caught out sexting women in the space of a year). Additionally another Tory MP Mark Garnier was exposed for calling his female assistant "sugar tits" and sending her out to buy sex toys.
Not only is Stephen Crabb a sex pest who thinks it's fine to abuse his position as an MP to send sexually explicit text messages to women less than half his age, he's also a brazen hypocrite and a homophobic bigot too.
Crabb is a glaring hypocrite because he loves to pose as if he's a devout Christian and happily married man.
And yes there's no 11th commandment "Thou shalt not send pervy messages to teenage girls on thy work phone", but it should be glaringly obvious to anyone who is serious about their Christian faith (or capable of basic human decency) that sending sexually explicit messages to teenagers is completely incompatible with having respect for your wife.
Despite having been twice caught out proving beyond doubt that he's willing to completely ignore the basic tenets of his professed Christian faith when it conflicts with his personal desire to send sexually explicit messages to women less than half his age, Crabb has repeatedly used Christianity as an excuse for interfering in other people's lives.
In 2007 Crabb voted against legislation to ban discrimination against LGBT people, and in 2014 he voted against gay equality legislation to allow same-sex couples the same right to marriage as heterosexual couples.
Both times he used Christianity as an excuse for his homophobic bigotry, and what's worse is that he's even taken political donations from a bigoted bunch of Christian extremists called CARE that advocate gay conversion "therapy".
Sarah Wollaston and other Tory MPs have every right to criticise the unacceptable comments that Jared O'Mara made. However if they don't speak out with the same fury when it's one of their fellow Tories speaking or acting like a pervert, homophobe, misogynist or bigot, then we can see that their previous complaints were just faux outrage motivated by a tribalistic urge to score political points against their political opponents.
So has Sarah Wollaston posted a hatchet job article about Stephen Crabb, slammed his misogynistic attitudes towards young women and his wife, attacked his bigoted attitudes towards LGBT people, and called for him to be sacked from the Tory party, and a by-election to be called in his constituency (where his majority over Labour is just 314)?
Of course she hasn't.
And has Nus Ghani decided to try to call an emergency parliamentary debate over Stephen Crabb's abuse of his position as an MP to send sexually explicit messages to a teenager?
Of course she hasn't.
This abject hypocrisy makes them part of the problem. If they're only willing to speak out when there are political points to be scored for their party, but they keep their lips tightly sealed when criticism of abuse, misogyny, homophobia or bigotry would damage the Tories, it's beyond obvious that they've got no real interest in confronting bigotry, and any criticism they aim at opposition politicians over bigoted words and actions is just artificial outrage expressed purely for party political advantage.
Nobody has a problem with people calling out bigotry. The issue here is consistency.
It shouldn't really matter whether you think politicians should be harshly punished for the things they wrote on the Internet long before they became parliamentary candidates, or the fact they got caught abusing their position as an MP to send sexually explicit texts to much younger women for a second time. Or whether you think they should be given the benefit of the doubt when they express regret and state that their views have changed and they won't behave like that in future.
What matters is consistency. If you're going to howl outrage over bigotry, then be consistent. Howl just as much outrage even when the bigot is a member of your own political party. And if you're going to give your political allies the benefit of the doubt, then you absolutely must give the benefit of the doubt to your political foes too.
In a way the double standards of Tories like Sarah Wollaston and Nus Ghani are perhaps even worse than Stephen Crabb's bigotry. Being a creepy pervert, homophobe and hypocrite just seems to be part of his personality. It's who he is.
Wollaston and Ghani on the other hand have displayed extreme double standards. Calling out bigotry on the opposition benches, but saying nothing about the bigots in their own party trivialises the issue by piggybacking their own party political agenda onto it.
They want to turn bigotry into a frenzied media circus when it's to their party's advantage, but just days later they won't even issue simple statements of condemnation when the bigot is one of their fellow Tories.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
I'm going to start off by saying that Labour's Clive Lewis did something really stupid. It doesn't matter that he said the word "bitch" to a man, any elected politician should be aware that gender specific insults are not fine.
It's important to note that Lewis has admitted his mistake, issued an unequivocal public apology and he certainly won't be making the same error of judgement again.
Now we get to some of the people kicking up a stink about Clive Lewis' use of the word "bitch".
I'm certainly not the first to point out that the right-wing slobs at the Guido Fawkes blog have built a castle on quicksand when it comes to manufacturing outrage about the use of the word "bitch". The Guido Twitter feed is absolutely littered with uses of that word, and they have a sickening track record of dishing out misogynistic abuse against women, including Paul Staines posting a picture of himself in bed with a cardboard cutout of Diane Abbott, attempts to ruin the lives of two very young female Labour Party activists (1 & 2), and an absolute tide of misogynistic abuse hurled at Dawn Foster by Guido acolytes just because she was sitting next to Clive Lewis at the time.
The synthetic outrage from the Tory benches is even more sickening than that of the hypocritical Guido Fawkes shit-slingers.
Tories don't actually give a damn about women and feminist issues, if they did they wouldn't have imposed 86% of the burden of their hard-right austerity dogma onto women. They wouldn't have introduced the vile "rape clause", and they certainly wouldn't be championing a misogynistic throwback who believes in forced pregnancy for the victims of rape and incest as one of their frontrunners to replace Theresa May when they finally decide to stop using her as a human bullet shield.
All the Tories care about is weaponising feminist language in order to smear their political opponents.
If they really care so much about use of the word "bitch" that they want an urgent debate on Clive Lewis for using the word at a man, where were all the calls from Tory MPs for an urgent debate on misogynistic language when the Scottish Tory MP David Mundell was filmed calling Yvette Cooper a bitch last year? Where were the calls for an urgent debate on misogyny when Theresa May decided to quote a vile misogynistic extreme-right Twitter troll in parliament in order to score cheap political points against Jeremy Corbyn?
Of course these opportunistic Tories don't care that one of their colleagues was filmed calling a woman a bitch, or that their leader thought it fine to quote a depraved extreme-right misogynist in parliament. Because to them countering misogyny isn't the point.
Of course the Tories don't care that Clive Lewis has already apologised. Because to them a man learning a lesson about the continued pervasiveness of sexism and sexist language in the 21st Century and apologising about it isn't the point.
Of course the Tories don't care that Clive Lewis has done more to try to actually improve women's lives than they ever have (or ever will) by consistently opposing their ideological obsession with misogynistic austerity dogma. Because to them actively working to improve the lives of ordinary women isn't the point.
They don't care because literally the only value feminist issues actually have to them is as an excuse to launch opportunistic political attacks on one of their opponents before they immediately get back to their day job of actively and consciously impoverishing millions of ordinary women through their obsession with austerity dogma, and forcing rape victims to recount their trauma or face financial punishment.
Hopefully this desperately cynical opportunism backfires on them. Firstly because feminism is the kind of "social justice warrior" stuff that sickens the regressive tabloid-reading hard-right Blue-kipper demographic (which makes up a significant proportion of their voter base these days). And secondly because any remotely sensible feminist knows that a Labour politician using the word "bitch" at a man and then apologising for it is absolutely outweighed by the disgraceful Tory track record of spending seven punishing years actively discriminating against millions of ordinary women with their sexist austerity policies.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
