Tory MP Brooks Newmark quits politics after sexting photograph comes to light; talks of depression, needing help, checks into clinic. To which the response of many people will be: Yeah, right. He’s playing the depression card.
I hope Spectator readers will think again, however horrified they are by his crazy actions and the pain he has inflicted on his family. He has accepted responsibility for what has happened; he is not raging against the sting that kicked off this scandal.
I knew Brooks very, very slightly until a couple of years ago: we have good friends in common. I vaguely remember him from his days as a postgraduate at Oxford. He was an American – it never occurred to me to think of him as English. He was fresh from Harvard. He had an open-topped sports car, plenty of money and glamorous friends.
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