Conservatives bounce from one scandal to another ahead of the local elections

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, it’s been a bad week for the Tories. Yesterday saw reports that an unnamed Tory MP had been seen watching pornography in the House of Commons chamber on multiple occasions. The allegation emerged in a meeting of Tory MPs on Tuesday night, which one MP described as a “blood-letting”, with attendees sharing “awful stories of what had happened to them in the Commons at the hands of male MPs”. Tory MP Pauline Latham said many people left the meeting “totally shell shocked”, as they “couldn’t believe something like that could happen in what’s really a professional place”.

This incredulity seems somewhat unbelievable in itself, given the repeated incidents of misogyny and reports of sexual misconduct at Westminster – even in the last week. And it’s not just a Tory problem. As The Sunday Times reported last weekend, 56 MPs are currently facing sexual misconduct investigations, including three Cabinet ministers and two Shadow Cabinet ministers. On the broadcast round this morning, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Ashworth spoke about the “culture” at Westminster: “There is bullying in that place, there’s misogyny, there’s sexism. We’ve got to stamp it out.”

Yesterday also saw the High Court rule that the government’s policy towards care homes at the outset of the Covid pandemic broke the law. Despite then Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s assertion that a “protective ring” had been thrown around care homes “right from the start”, the High Court concluded that the government’s policy of discharging untested patients from hospitals into care homes was unlawful because it failed to take into account the risk to residents from non-symptomatic transmission.

Ashworth was damning on Sky News this morning, saying it made him “livid” to see Tory ministers claiming Boris Johnson “got all the big calls right”. “One of the biggest calls was protecting care homes,” Ashworth said. “And they got that wrong with the most devastating and tragic of consequences.” The Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary – who was previously Shadow Health Secretary – also stressed that this was not simply an error caused by pandemic time pressures: “In the end, it all comes back to Tory decisions about not funding the NHS properly and not funding social care properly.” Health and social care committee chair Jeremy Hunt agreed, saying a “broader issue” was that “problems in the social care system” still have not been “sorted out” – an ongoing failure he accepted some responsibility for as a former Health Secretary.

On LabourList today, we cover new research from the Fabians that suggests that older voters feel Labour is moving in the “right direction”. We also have a piece from Politics for the Many coordinator Nancy Platts on how our voting system is locking unions and workers out of power. Do also check out my review of the last PMQs of this parliamentary session, in which Keir Starmer made the case that the cost-of-living crisis has been caused by Tory policy decisions.