Which conservatives are having an affair

Released after three years because of poor health, he would go on to marry Buckley, write three novels and appear on several television shows to talk about his vanishing act. In perhaps the biggest political scandal of the Sixties, the secretary of state for war John Profumo lost his job after lying about his affair with the year-old model and dancer Christine Keeler.

The relationship in all likelihood would have been brushed under the carpet had it not transpired that Keeler was also involved with the Soviet naval attache, Yevgeny Ivanov. But after Keeler testified that they had, in fact, engaged in a fleeting affair, he admitted he had lied and resigned on 5 June Macmillan would resign later that year, and in the general election the Labour Party was ushered into power.

Skip to header Skip to main content Skip to footer. Home News Politics. Another Trumpian aspect was the timing of the takeover. Just as the Republicans were vulnerable to political takeovers from the political fringe after their double defeat at the hands of Obama and their so-called post-mortem , the Austrian conservatives were in massive decline in In this situation, Kurz, much like Donald Trump, proposed moving the party sharply to the right rather than to the centre, as Merkel had done in Germany.

Moreover, Kurz was able to turn a structural weakness of his party into a political advantage for himself. In the past, the national party was dominated by powerful component organisations and regional party leaders. Kurz used the vacuum in the centre to his advantage by filling the central party apparatus, the government, and a sizeable portion of conservative MPs with people who were personally loyal to him but posed no threat to his power. This was an extremely frightening prospect for conservative state governors, who rely on the largesse of the federal government and its control by conservatives.

The vulgar language in these chat exchanges would normally be unremarkable in a private conversation, but it resonated with the public precisely because Kurz and his team were known for carefully controlled messaging, rhetorical deftness, and highly choreographed public performances. Polite language, restrained gestures, a neat appearance and formal attire have become his trademarks. Political insiders have described his way of governing as maintaining power through communication.

His ideological core or his political vision for the country, on the other hand, have remained elusive even to careful observers. The substantive political impact of his two terms in office has been small, despite hyperbolic proclamations of historic political change.

Some of this was also enacted as formal policy; some remained pure rhetoric. There were also scapegoats such as the EU, especially the European Commission, which Kurz blamed for the initial lack of vaccine doses in Austria, although the failure clearly lay with an overly fiscally restrictive Austrian government. Overall, however, he pursued conventional conservative clientele politics with a preference for those clientele groups within his heterogeneous party on which he depended to consolidate his power.

His main achievement was to embody in the public eye the role of the dashing young conservative visionary who transformed a stodgy old party into a campaign juggernaut, marginalising the left and taming the far right.

It was the full treatment. To his astonishment, the whips were telling him and other backbenchers to back the government in moves aimed at blocking the suspension from parliament of their colleague, the former cabinet minister and Tory old-stager Owen Paterson.

Have we not had a formal procedure that is pretty conclusive here? On a personal level there was plenty of sympathy for Paterson. Last year his wife, Rose, who ran Aintree racecourse, had taken her own life as the investigations into her husband continued. But despite the tragedy it seemed to most MPs that due process had been followed and the evidence against him was pretty conclusive.

His actions breached rules which ban MPs from taking part in paid advocacy. In addition, Paterson had, on 16 occasions, used his House of Commons office for meetings relating to his private business interests, and failed on a number of occasions to declare those interests.

So given the list of breaches what, MPs wondered, was going on? It was coming from No Things were moving at pace. There were also vicious briefings taking place against Stone by some senior Tories, who questioned whether she should stay in post given what they alleged had been her failure to give Paterson a fair hearing. It was so unethical. I thought do I really want to be associated with these people? On Wednesday afternoon the plan was put to a vote of MPs.

Johnson ordered his own troops to be put on a three-line whip. The government won by a margin of to , but several dozen Tories refused to back the government. The damaging rebellion saw 13 vote against and 60 abstain, including former prime minister Theresa May, having been encouraged to stay away. Chaos ensued. Labour and the other opposition parties quickly said they would have nothing to do with the new committee that they said would inevitably be a Tory-run sham.

Without opposition MPs, parliamentary standards would be upheld and investigated by a body on which only Tories would sit.