Conservatives
Tory Bad Boys – Part 08 Cecil Parkinson
One of Maggie’s blue eyed boys. Yet again another sex scandal. Cecil was a cad. He was the Tory MP for Hertsmere from 1979 to 1992, then they gave him the ermine and he moved [more…]
Fraud
Conservatives
Tory Bad Boys – Part 07 Lords Lambton and Jellicoe
Two ministers in Ted Heath’s government who featured in sex and drugs scandals. If only they had known what Ted was alleged to be up to. This was exposed by the News of the World [more…]
Conservatives
Tory Bad Boys – Part 06 Lord Boothby
Robert Boothby, often known as Bob, later elevated to Baron Boothby in 1958, was a Tory politician and not a particularly successful one but I remember him always being on political programs in the 1960s [more…]
Conservatives
Tory Bad Boys – Part 05 John Vassall
Purists will argue that John Vassall was nothing to do with the Tories and in a sense they are right. John Vassall was a junior civil servant who spied for the Russians between 1954 and [more…]
Conservatives
Tory Bad Boys Part – 04 Thomas Dugdale
I had never heard of this one but on the face of it this was a case of a minister doing the honourable thing and resigning as a result of his civil servants screwing things [more…]
Conservatives
Tory Bad Boys – Part 03 Reginald Maudling
Reggie was one of the big beasts of the Tory Party in the 50s and 60s. He was another who was hovering around the leadership along with RAB Butler. Neither of them quite managed to [more…]
Conservatives
Tory Bad Boys – Part 02 John Profumo
Quite possibly one of the most damaging events in the history of the Tory Party. Everything was going wrong for them, they seemed like a bunch of incompetents. From the great train robbery, spies in [more…]
Conservatives
Tory Bad Boys – Part 01 Ernest Marples
I have chosen to start this with a piece on Ernest Marples. I remember him as Minister for Transport opening the first motorway section of the M1 in 1959 when I was 8, technically it [more…]
Politics
Banana Republic UK
I was forced through conversation today to contrast my experience of the U.K. from 48 years ago with the present day, as we spoke the differences were crystallised confirming the abyss into which the U.K. [more…]