Poor Rishi Sunak is stuck in a Sisyphean circle from hell. Each month, he prepares himself for a much-hyped reset, only to find himself fighting yet another by-election not of his own making. This Thursday he faces a brace of defeats in Mid-Bedfordshire and Tamworth thanks to the misdemeanours of Nadine Dorries and Chris Pincher respectively. A Tory defeat in the former would be the largest numerical majority to be overturned in British electoral history; a defeat in the latter would foreshadow the landslide that Tony Blair won 26 years ago.
Now Sunak faces yet another by-election not of his own making – this time in Peter Bone’s Wellingborough seat. Bone has been suspended from the Commons for six weeks for committing ‘many varied acts of bullying and one act of sexual misconduct’ against a member of his staff way back in 2012 and 2013. Another historic mess that has ended up on Rishi’s plate. The Independent Expert Panel stated:
This is a serious case of misconduct…. bullying involved violence, shouting and swearing, mocking, belittling and humiliating behaviour, and ostracism…. This wilful pattern of bullying also included an unwanted incident of sexual misconduct, when the complainant was trapped in a room with the respondent in a hotel in Madrid… This was a deliberate and conscious abuse of power using a sexual mechanism: indecent exposure.
Bone has now released a statement, claiming the findings are ‘without foundation’. Six weeks is of course more than the ten days necessary to trigger a recall petition and an inevitable by-election, if the standards committee agrees to recommend the suspension too.
With Labour 20 points ahead in the polls, another difficult contest looms for our beleaguered PM…
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