Let's imagine for a moment that it's your job to work as a mercenary hack for an extreme-right propaganda rag. Your bosses want you to come up with an article defending the indefensible.
They're terrified that the Westminster sex pest scandal is going to cost Theresa May the slim parliamentary majority that it cost her £1 billion in bribes to the DUP to obtain, so they want you to write an article defending the sex pests and denouncing their critics. So how would you go about it?
Well this is the scenario faced by the Daily Mail hack Peter Hitchens, and his solution to the problem was to equate the victims of sexual assaults and harassment to "militant Islamists".
The crux of his argument being that if women complain when powerful men grope them or harass them with sexist comments, then males in general are the actual victims, and women in politics should end up wearing a niqab or a burka as a safety measure.
Hitchens begins his torturous path to this absurd conclusion with a simple sleight of hand. he denounces anyone who complains about their abuse/harassment at the hands of a specific man with "the belief that all men should be assumed to be slavering sex predators", which he claims is a view they share with "militant Islamists".
It's interesting to see that Hitchens assumes his audience of Daily Mail readers to be so thick that they couldn't possibly differentiate between an allegation that "a specific man groped me" and an assertion that "all men are slavering sex predators".
Hitchens then tries to elicit sympathy for the sex pests by chastising the victims: "Any male action, any form of words you choose to disapprove of can and will be presumed to be guilty because, well, men are like that. The culprit will be ruined for ever" he whines.
Of course there is always the problem of a small minority of women who make false, malicious or exaggerated accusations against men. Women who not only attempt to trash innocent men's reputations, but also cast doubt on the testimonies of actual victims through their dishonesty.
But this is not what's happening in the Westminster sex pest scandal, because several of the MPs have already openly admitted what they did (including the Tory MP Mark Garnier was actually allowed to keep his ministerial job after laughing off his massively inappropriate treatment of a female employee as if it was all just jolly japes).
Attempting to elicit sympathy for the alleged perpetrators of sexual harassment as if they're the victims is bad enough, but when many of them have actually already admitted their guilt, then it's just downright sick.
Hitchens' next move is the classic whataboutery tactic.
What about "the biggest constitutional crisis in a Century" he whines? And What about the country "wobbling on the precipice of bankruptcy"?
Under these circumstances, Hitchens opines, women who denounce the sexual misdemeanours of senior politicians are ridiculous, and will be "laughed at by future generations".
The obvious problem with Hitchens citing these specific whataboutery issues is that he makes no attempt to explain how the country ended up in such a parlous position.
He makes no attempt whatever to explain that the "biggest constitutional crisis in a Century" is the absolute shambles the Tory party are making of Brexit, and the economic weakness of the country is a result of seven years of ruinous Tory austerity dogma.
It's way beyond insincere to raise these issues and just ignore the role the Daily Mail have played in all of this. His fellow Daily Mail hacks relentlessly promoted Brexit despite the fact that the Brexiteers had no plan whatever for how they were actually going to manage the transition, and they poured absolute derision on anyone who dared suggest that investment economics makes more long-term economic sense than the Tories' bonkers "let's cut our way to growth" austerity fetishism.
Hitchens then goes on to dig himself even deeper into his hole by pointing out that "Michael Fallon was one of the worst Defence Secretaries in history" in order to lament that Fallon wasn't made to quit because of his incompetence, but because he's not "safe in mixed company".
Again, Hitchens avoids the Daily Mail's role in all of this. In June 2017 Theresa May handed the British people a wonderful chance to remove Michael Fallon as defence secretary, but the Daily Mail churned out a relentlessly pro-Tory propaganda line for the entire General Election campaign which helped him back into office.
The Daily Mail worked tirelessly to convince their readers to keep Michael Fallon as Defence Secretary despite his obvious dishonesty, incompetence and blabber-mouthed lunacy, and now one of their main columnists is whining about the way that he's gone.
Given the Daily Mail's role in keeping this incompetent buffoon in his job, Hitchen's should actually be grateful that the women who succeeded in removing him by denouncing him as a sex pest. Instead of attacking them, Hitchens should actually be thanking them for clearing up another of the Daily Mail's messes.
After making an absolute fool of himself by citing three Daily Mail messes as more serious problems than sexual assault, Hitchens returns to one of his favourite themes; feminist-bashing.
When he says "the suspicion lingers that much of the current fuss is aimed mainly at making all men look wicked and grubby" he's displaying his paranoia.
When a sex pest is denounced as a sex pest (for stuff like groping junior staff and young journalists, sending sexual text messages to a teenager he only has the contact details for because she applied for a job in his office, misogyny, or sexual harassment) I don't find that I empathise with the perpetrator just because I too have a penis.
I'm actually glad that they've been exposed as the creeps that they are, because I don't behave like that with women, so why should they be allowed to get away with it just because they've got power. wealth and authority?
Hitchens finishes off his article by proposing "the niqab, the burka, and the segregation of the sexes" as a solution, before having one more dig at the victims by implying that they're suffering from insanity for having spoken out.
In the middle of the article Hitchens prophesied that the victims of sexual misconduct would be laughed at by future generations, but my prediction is different: Future generations will be full of derision should they ever come across this display of paranoid, hyperbolic, and intellectually dishonest victim-blaming from a mercenary hack working for a fanatically right-wing publication that actually helped to create the whataboutery problems he cites as being more important than dealing with the allegations of sexual misconduct he's decrying.
Look at his anachronistic views on issues like love, marriage, and equality of the sexes they'll snigger. Look at the way he displays his shockingly compromised integrity and look at the way he uses intellectually dishonest tricks to fool the audience he arrogantly believes to be his inferiors.
What backwards times people lived in, future generations will wonder, that the people of Britain actually accepted such a repulsive blend of arrogance, divisiveness, misogyny, misdirection, victim-blaming and paranoia published by the propaganda arm of the thankfully long-defunct Tory party!
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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?
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.
Elements of the mainstream media (including the BBC) are working hard to try to whitewash it, but the fact is that Theresa May's handling of the Tory sex pest scandal is outrageously self-serving and inept, even by her own piteous standards.
Theresa May knows that even despite having bribed the DUP extremists into propping up her government, she's in a position of extreme weakness in parliament. The thinness of her government's majority means that she simply can't afford to properly punish her MPs for serious sexual misdemeanours.
Thus we're in the bizarre position of seeing Labour quickly suspend Jared O'Mara for having made a load of vile Internet comments years before he actually became an MP, while Theresa May is far to weak to even ditch Mark Garnier as a government minister after he openly admitted treating a junior female employee in a massively inappropriate manner during his time in parliament, let alone suspend him from the Tory party.
If a guy in pretty much any other job used sexist terms at a junior female colleague, and sent her out to buy sex toys on company time, he'd be in big trouble. But in Theresa May's Tory party this kind of behaviour is apparently so acceptable that there's no punishment for it whatever.
Then there's the married Tory MP Stephen Crabb who hasn't been suspended despite having been caught sending inappropriate sexual texts to young women for a second time! If a young woman applies for a job in your office, you don't then have the right to send her a load of sexual filth after you rejected her job application. The sight of Tories actually defending this behaviour is quite extraordinary, and the fact that Theresa May hasn't suspended Stephen Crabb suggests that she's absolutely fine with it too.
Then there's the case of Michael Fallon, who, according to Robert Peston, resigned as Defence Secretary because he knows that he's sexually harassed numerous other women, and the stress of waiting for them to come forward and expose his behaviour did for him.
Theresa May's response to this preemptive resignation was absolutely extraordinary.
Instead of demanding that Fallon provide a list of women he remembers harassing and groping in order that the party can consider whether he should be permanently expelled or not, she actually sent the guy a bloody love letter detailing how all the things she adores about him.
In her love letter to Fallon she even praises him for having set a good example by resigning, but makes no effort whatever to address the fact that sexual harassment is unacceptable.
The shockingly lax attitude Theresa May has been displaying towards the sex pests in her own party is bad enough, but the Labour MP Lisa Nandy really nailed her to the floor in parliament when she drew attention to Theresa May's abject lack of response in 2014 to her questions about how the Tory whips office use the sexual misdemeanours of Tory MPs in order to blackmail them into unquestioning loyalty to the party.
Amazingly the BBC news team decided that this question was not serious enough to include in their news reports on the sex pest scandal, as if the Prime Minister getting caught out like that isn't noteworthy enough to tell people about.
The way the leaked Tory sex dossier jumbled together extreme cases of sexual harassment with stuff like consensual affairs between Tory MPs and the kinky sexual tastes of others made it absolutely clear that it was more of a blackmail list than an effort to confront sexual harassment/assaults within the Tory party.
Lisa Nandy raised the subject of blackmail by the Tory whips office three years ago and Theresa May did nothing about it. The leaked Tory blackmail list is evidence that this blackmail culture of collecting accusations of sexual harassment/assault (along with stuff like extramarital affairs and unusual sexual proclivities) has still been going on under her watch.
It's absolutely obvious that when the party becomes aware that an MP has an issue (groping women, forming inappropriate relationships with junior staff, perpetual drunkenness, use of drugs and/or prostitutes ...) they should ensure that the MP gets help with their addiction problems, and launch disciplinary procedures/notify the police if the offences are serious enough to warrant it (which stuff like groping, sexual harassment, and assault definitely are).
Not only has Theresa May allowed the Tory whips office to continue collecting dirt on Tory MPs in order to blackmail them into compliance, she's allowed this blackmail culture to continue on her watch despite being explicitly warned about it multiple times three years ago, before she even became Tory leader.
It's obvious that all political parties are going to have problems with inappropriate sexual behaviour. Even smaller parties like the Lib-Dems and the Greens have tens of thousands of members, so just a 0.1% rate would result in dozens of incidents to deal with.
The thing that differentiates the parties is how their leaders react when sexual misdemeanour cases come to light.
If they react quickly to suspend the suspects while investigations are conducted, they're taking the issue seriously.
If they deliberately turn a blind eye to the blackmail culture of the whips office for years, and then allow people who openly admit that they're sex pests to not only remain as Tory MPs, but as members of government too ... well it's obvious that they're prioritising other factors (like desperately maintaining a razor thin parliamentary majority) over dealing with the sex pest scandal.
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.
