The sex scandal is what psychologists call ‘displacement activity’

There are three reasons why Britain’s political and media world finds itself in the present ludicrous uproar over sexual misbehaviour at Westminster, and only one of them has anything to do with sexual misbehaviour. But let us start with that.

And, first, a caveat. Can there be an organisation anywhere in discovered space which, subjected to the intense media scrutiny that the House of Commons now attracts, would not generate a comparable stock of report and rumour? Imagine a workplace — indeed imagine a workplace like our own august Spectator offices – peopled by a lively mixture of creatives, eccentrics, wannabes,...