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Prime minister's deputy quits after porn claims
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This file photo taken on October 01, 2017 shows
Britain's First Secretary of State and Minister for the Cabinet Office, Damian Green addressing the delegates on the first day of the Conservative Party annual conference at the Manchester Central Convention Centre, in Manchester. British prime minister's deputy Damian Green resigns on Dec. 20, 2017.
(Agence France -Presse/Ben Stansall)
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K Prime Minister Theresa May’s effective deputy, Damian Green, resigned after an official investigation found that he’d made misleading statements about pornography on one of his parliamentary office computers, and left questions unanswered about his behavior toward a female activist.
“I am extremely sad to be writing this,” May wrote in a letter to Green, released by her office, asking him to quit. “We have been friends and colleagues throughout our whole political lives.”
His departure strips her of one of the most loyal members of her government as she seeks to steer Britain’s path out of the European Union and rescue her struggling premiership. The 61-year-old and May knew each other since they were at Oxford University and he is one of her closest political allies -- ushered into the Cabinet after her election debacle.
He is the third member of her cabinet to leave office since the start of November. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon quit over inappropriate sexual behavior while Priti Patel stepped down as international development secretary after she misled the premier over private meetings with Israeli officials.
Unlike the previous two resignations, Green’s won’t require a Cabinet reshuffle -- his role came without a departmental portfolio -- and officials in May’s office said there were no immediate plans to replace him. May set off for a visit to Poland on Thursday morning.
It is not clear in any case who in the government could take over as May’s all-round trusted fixer and adviser.
One possible candidate is Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who was sent out on Thursday morning to give interviews on Green’s departure. “He lied on a particular incident,” Hunt told the BBC. He said May had sacked Green “very sadly, and I know with a very heavy heart. I’m sure she didn’t want him to go.”
Green’s is the latest and most senior British head to roll as a result of women coming forward to complain about inappropriate sexual behavior in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
In October, when that story broke, Green was asked whether he thought there were similar episodes in British politics. “People’s awareness generally of the facts that there are usually men in power who seek to exploit that power for bad purposes is the best defense against it,” he replied.
Two weeks later, he was himself in the spotlight, after a journalist and Conservative activist 30 years his junior, Kate Maltby, described how he had taken her for a drink in 2015 to discuss her political career.
After discussing political sex scandals, she wrote, “he mentioned that his own wife was very understanding. I felt a fleeting hand against my knee — so brief, it was almost deniable.”
When the article was published, Green did indeed deny it, but May asked her civil servants to investigate whether he had broken the ministerial code. That investigation led a former senior officer from London’s Metropolitan Police, Bob Quick, to allege that pornography was found on a computer in Green’s office before he became a minister.
