Damian Green - The End Beckons

As I suggested the other day, deputy PM Damian Green would do himself and his party a whole lot of good if he acknowledged that the shit was going to hit the fan, and resign as First Secretary of State before it happens. This was in the sure and certain knowledge that there were more accusations of what That Spreadsheet calls “inappropriate” behaviour coming on down the track, one of which has arrived courtesy of the Mail.

That's right, Sir, both hands where we can see them

Green, whose description on the now infamous spreadsheet of Tory MPs with less than conventional behaviour patterns in and around Parliament was “Ashley Madison - handsy at parties”, is already the subject of a newspaper investigation, and, whisper it quietly, it is not the story that the Mail has picked up on. That means even if he were to successfully bat that one off, there would be at least one more embarrassment to come.

So what has the Mail brought us? Under the headline “May faces fresh pressure to sack Deputy PM Damian Green after he 'misled her over flirtation with journalist’”, readers are told “Mr Green had been accused of inappropriate sexual advances and sending messages to Kate Maltby earlier this month … The deputy Prime Minister denied the claims and was adamant that they first met in 2014”. But then comes the killer.

Yes, we are then told of “the emergence of a picture depicting the pair together a year earlier in June 2013”. And it gets worse. “Texts also show that Mr Green and Ms Maltby had been in touch since August 2013”. So it is no surprise to see that the next line in the article spells it out, for all those doubting that Green is in the mire:  “The revelation is expected to intensify calls for the Prime Minister to sack her deputy”.

The Murdoch Sun told of Ms Maltby “It was in 2015 when she said Mr Green met her in a bar and put ‘a fleeting hand against my knee’. He  later asked her out for a drink when she appeared in a corset in a newspaper article. He denied making a pass and sending her flirty texts … Ms Maltby, 31, said she did not want to comment”. Maybe she hasn’t commented to the Sun. But she may have hastened the information flow to the press.

And if Damian Green wants to know exactly what happens when the other party decides to take revenge - remember, Ms Maltby has been given a real working-over by Green’s pals in the press - he could always ask the deeply unpleasant “Shagger” Mellor, who thought he could cling on to office back in 1992, only for Antonia de Sancha to make sure he didn’t.

Remember also that Green has already found his trousers well alight over the computer porn claims. At first, we were told that he “dismisses the allegation as ‘completely untrue’ and from a ‘tainted’ source”. But soon afterwards, the porn claim was confirmed, and it got a lot worse: “Pornography allegedly found on Damian Green’s computer was so extreme it would have been illegal if found weeks later, it was claimed”.

Damian Green has now been caught lying about recent allegations not once, but twice. The drip-drip of revelation has started. And, as I previously told, there is at least one more serious allegation about his previous conduct on the way. It is now time for him to go.