Neil Parish, the MP for Tiverton and Honiton, is set to quit the Commons. After he was this week accused of watching porn in the chamber, Parish swiftly had the whip withdrawn and referred himself to Parliament’s complaints process. But he initially claimed he would stay in the job and continue to represent his constituency until the inquiry finished.
Now though the BBC has confirmed that Parish will stand down as an MP after admitting that he watched porn twice on the parliamentary estate. Parish suggested the first time he looked at porn it was accidental after viewing tractors on his phone, but the second time was deliberate.
It’s certainly been a rollercoaster week for the Devon MP. Before the identity of the porn-MP had been revealed, Parish appeared on GB News to discuss the allegations. On Friday, after the revelations first broke and his identity was revealed, he released a terse statement saying he would not comment at this stage. This was soon followed by a press conference in which he suggested that he may have watched porn in the Commons by mistake. Parish also gave an interview to the Telegraph, telling the paper that now the allegation had been aired, he felt like ‘a weight is lifted off me’.
Parish’s wife had also defended the MP, telling reporters that while the allegations were embarrassing, ‘If you were mad with every man who looked at pornography, I think there would be very few men in the world who have not had their wives going on at them.’ It seems though that the pressure on Parish reached a tipping point.
With Parish’s constituency now up for grabs, CCHQ will not be best pleased to face another by-election dominated by Tory misdemeanours. The seat itself should be comfortably safe for the Conservatives. In 2019 Parish had a majority of 24,000 – a vote margin which has been steadily rising since he first stood in 2010. (Clearly Parish’s long running campaign for faster broadband in his constituency has been a vote winner.)
But following Owen Paterson’s defenestration over sleaze allegations, the Lib Dems managed to take the Tory stronghold of North Shropshire with a swing of 37 per cent. Will voters take a similar view of Parish’s misdemeanours? Either way, Parish’s Conservative successor will certainly have to rise to the occasion.
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