Mark Oaten's local paper, the Daily Echo
It is incontrovertible that stories about sex sell newspapers, and the revelations about Mark Oaten's private life have certainly helped boost sales of the nationals over the weekend. Now it would seem it is the turn of the local press to try and finish him off altogether, writes Jody Dunn.
Yesterday's Southern Daily Echo carried the headline: How can Oaten carry on as MP after all this?
The truth is, it may well be that he can't. However much you may consider that Mark has been the author of his own downfall, most would surely agree that the pressure he is currently under must be almost intolerable.
Will he end up stepping down as MP for Winchester? I don't pretend to have any insider knowledge on that topic - I suspect not even Mark has made up his mind on that point yet - but for what it's worth, I hope he doesn't feel forced to disappear from politics altogether.
I have never had anything like the political profile of Mark Oaten, but I do have some experience of being the victim of tabloid desperation.
At the time of the Hartlepool by-election in 2004 I was the married mother of four children. By the time of the general election in May 2005 my marriage had ended.
I did not think to issue a press release on the issue as, quite frankly, I didn't think it mattered. Not to the country, anyway.
Some months after my marriage was over I then had the audacity to date someone (single) for about four weeks. This outrageous sequence of events prompted the Daily Mirror to send a journalist from London to Middlesbrough to find out the truth behind this shocking story.
I came out of the county court with my client (I work as a barrister) to be confronted by the press asking if it was true that I was "having an affair". Apparently, he had been working on the "story" for two days.
The allegation was hardly a sensation, and in any event unfounded, but it gave me just a little insight into what I could have expected had I won the seat last May (I didn't).
As a single mother, would it really be worth standing again for parliament if it meant running the risk of being confronted by a journalist every time I went on a date?
I read with interest the many comments posted after yesterday's entry (thank you) and I know there is a huge divergence of views on the issue of press intrusion.
What right, if any, does the press have to delve into the private lives of those in public life?
Some still think that once the choice is made to be in the public eye all rights to either privacy or fallibility are lost forever, and in many cases it becomes the press who decide, almost unilaterally, who stays and who goes. I question whether this is a healthy way to run the country.
Even Mark's opponents agree that he has been an excellent constituency MP. Should he now have to step down because the local press says he should?
I, for one, hope not. There are enough skeletons in enough cupboards to mean that should they all be uncovered the House of Commons would be a very sparsely populated place indeed.
* Jody Dunn was the Liberal Democrat candidate for Hartlepool at last year's general election.
