“It’s my private life,” Boris Johnson once told his party leader, Michael Howard. “And I have the right to lie about it.”
At the time, Johnson had denied having an affair, writes Nick Timothy. But shortly after his former lover’s mother proved he had lied, confirming that his daughter had become pregnant with his baby and subsequently had an abortion, Howard fired Johnson from the shadow cabinet.
The idea that politicians and publics should be scrutinized for their private actions was once accepted as a given. In the 1980s Cecil Parkinson resigned from the cabinet over his relationship with Sara Keays. In the 1990s, Robin Cook was forced to choose between his wife and his mistress when Alastair Campbell told him the press was about to report his infidelity.
But times have changed since then. As the divorce rate increased, society understood more that sometimes marriages do end. Since stone-throwing politicians were often found to live in glass houses, many concluded that the politics of morality was a dangerous business.
The triumph of economic and social liberalism embedded the principles of permissive society. If a spouse is bound by marriage, who are we to judge their affair? If a man wants to pay for sex, why shouldn’t he? Increasingly, the quest for self-actualization goes beyond even the facts of life: women can become men, and men can become women, claiming to menstruate, breastfeed, and mother. And who are we to point out the obvious?
Nick Timothy: Private lives often deserve public scrutiny
