So embattled Tory MP Aidan Burley has now made his choice:
as I told
the other day, his options were to go now, go at the next General Election,
or tough it out and get thrown out by his electorate in Cannock Chase. He has
wisely decided not to precipitate a by-election – which the Tories would have
lost, whoever stood in his place – but to
stand down next year.
Why he
eventually gave in was down to one thing: the sure and certain knowledge
that his
participation in that Nazi-themed stag party at the French alpine resort of
Val Thorens, where he had hired the SS uniform for groom Mark Fournier, would
continue to generate hostile press coverage, especially given Fournier’s
subsequent conviction by a French court, as wearing that uniform is illegal in
France.
Ever since the Gold report into Burley’s conduct was
released, there has been a steady stream of Jewish voices ready to condemn the
MP’s conduct, backed up by the Mail On
Sunday, ready at every turn to extract maximum retribution for the
suggestion that they provoked Fournier’s Nazi salute, and the Gold report’s
omission of any of their previous stories.
What made the pressure unbearable was when, last weekend, it
was made clear that the MoS had
widened its trawl for dirt to Burley’s family,
notably his fiancée Jodie Jones, who is also an active member of the Tory
Party with ambitions of her own. According to Ms Jones, her parents had also
been targeted. There was a sudden realisation of what all those Leveson
witnesses had experienced.
And the line being pushed by the MoS was that the MP had been dishonest with his colleagues: once
the whiff of mistrust takes hold, it is hard to clear it away. His opponents
accused Burley of lying to the Jewish Chronicle as well: that, on
top of the stag party, sits badly with his having received significant backing
from Conservative Friends Of Israel. A friend of Israel who attends Nazi-themed
parties?
It was also clear that the visit to Burley’s constituency by
Northcliffe House’s finest had not yet translated into any published copy,
which means it was being saved for future editions of the paper. The pressure
generated merely by knowing that there was more to come would have affected not
just Burley and his immediate circle, but the wider party locally and at
Westminster.
So, although it looks as if Aidan Burley made the decision
by himself, it is most likely that he was persuaded to do so by senior members
of his own party, and that the local association was also contacted and given
the hard word. And that word was that Burley had to go: even with more than a
year to get another candidate ready for the 2015 General Election, Cannock
Chase will be hard for the Tories to retain.
Aidan Burley took on the real world, and he lost. He will not be the last to try.
1 comment:
Surely the main problem was the (repeated) lying, in the face of obvious evidence.
That gave the MoS the ammo, and embarrassed the party - and although the going after his fiancee personally is unfair, it's very obviously a conflict of interest for her to chair a committee which cleared him of wrongdoing.
I just can't understand why anyone would want to have a Nazi-themed stag party - it wouldn't even vaguely occur to me. Surely even more especially someone who has aspirations, as he obviously did, of a high-flying political career, and with a lot of trust from on high. All he had to do was say sorry and that he'd made a massive mistake - he might not have kept his seat but he'd probably have saved his career. Instead his arrogance won out.
In reality he was just shit wasn't he? a tedious, arrogant gobshite with no real ideas, just like almost everyone else in his party. What this actually demonstrates is just how shallow the talent pool is in the 'up and coming ranks' of the Tory party and it's why they'll be on the scrapheap permanently pretty soon.
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