Two years after the Pestminster scandal about sexual harassment by politicians swept through parliament in 2017, a downbeat speech in the House of Commons summed up how many female MPs and aides felt about its consequences.
The verdict was delivered by Jess Phillips, the Labour MP and women’s rights campaigner. “Nothing has changed since we started the whole Pestminster thing or even the broader #MeToo movement; it feels as if a moment of blood-letting led to no significant material change in the actual working lives of the people we are here to try to protect.”
Another four years on, and the flow of sexual harassment allegations ignored or badly handled by the political parties has not stopped despite new systems supposed to deal with complaints.
The latest is the case of Daniel Korski, a former No 10 special adviser and now candidate to be the Conservative London mayoral hopeful. He denies allegations by a TV producer, Daisy Goodwin that he groped her breast during a meeting in Downing Street. She first raised concerns anonymously in 2017 in a Radio Times interview but her claims were not investigated at the time.
What has followed since Goodwin made her allegation naming Korski on Tuesday is an all-too-familiar exercise in buck-passing. The Conservative party will not investigate when the alleged incident took place in Downing Street, but the government suggests it is a party matter now he is a candidate for the mayoralty.
If the complaint is not about “current or former members of the parliamentary community” or a visit to the estate, then the complainant cannot use the independent complaints and grievance service. It also does not cover political staff who do not work in parliament, such as party aides and government special advisers.
The common thread among many allegations of sexual misbehaviour in Westminster that have been aired in recent years is that complainants often have no single clear process to follow, and that the parties and government take too long to get to grips with long-rumoured problems. And it is still very difficult for third parties who were witnesses to alleged sexual misbehaviour to draw attention to problems.
A number of Labour backbenchers are furious about the case of Geraint Davies, who was suspended following allegations of sexual impropriety. Another Labour MP, Charlotte Nichols, has separately said there is a second Labour frontbencher accused of sexual misconduct. In both those two cases, some of the party’s MPs feel there has been a slowness to act.
“They have known about this sort of behaviour – not just from him, but from others as well – for a very long time, and they have chosen not to act,” Nichols said earlier this month, accusing the party of having “gaslit” her over the allegations.
The Conservatives have an even worse track record, with Boris Johnson’s demise as prime minister eventually sealed by revelations that he had appointed Chris Pincher as his deputy chief whip despite knowing about allegations of sexual impropriety towards men. The former prime minister did not deny referring to him as “Pincher by name, pincher by nature”.
Since the beginning of this parliament, now ex-Tory MPs Imran Ahmad Khan and Charlie Elphicke have been found in court to have committed sexual offences, while Andrew Griffiths was found to have raped his wife and engaged in coercive control in a family court judgment. Rob Roberts, Chris Pincher and Neil Parish all had the whip suspended by the Conservatives after claims of sexual misconduct.
Only last week, David Warburton resigned as a Tory MP after being suspended over allegations of sexual harassment, which he denies and now claims the #MeToo movement has “swung too far”.
For many women in Westminster, it does not seem like that. The allegations are still coming and the slowness to investigate them remains in many instances. Phillips still feels like “nothing much has changed” and in relation to Korski, she says the Conservative party should proactively be “encouraging an official complaint and committing to a full investigation”.
