It may be hard to resist taking a certain twisted pleasure in the current predicament of the Tory MP Piers Merchant, but I think we should. The Sun newspaper has publicly declared its support for Tony Blair s so-called New Labour and as a result has been digging its leprous teeth into the unsavoury rump of the Conservative party with some relish in recent weeks. The Merchant dunce is their latest victim.
Last week, the paper devoted six pages to a story alleging that the honourable Member for Beckenham, Kent, had been having an extra-marital dalliance with a 17-year-old Soho nightclub hostess, one Ms. Anna Cox. The report contained pictures of the happy couple embracing and kissing, passionately, in a field. With the kiss part of the typical tabloid coupling effectively documented, Ms. Cox could then proceed to complete the story by telling and this she did, co-operating fully with the salivating news hounds.
They had met, she revealed, at a Young Conservatives event last October, and she subsequently helped Mr. Merchant with secretarial work in the House of Commons. Their affair, she claimed, started in February. Someone should have warned Mr. Merchant to beware the Ides of March. Before the following month was half done, she d decided to sell the tale of her alleged adventures with the Merchant semen to The Sun. I am not old enough to vote, she was quoted as having said, but I am old enough to know when I have been used. It was a line good enough to have been written by a tabloid hack though, goodness knows, I m sure it can t have been!
The truth is that anything which embarrasses John Major s party and which makes it more likely that the Conservatives will go down, as it were, in the upcoming election, broadly speaking has to be in the national interest. And from the perspective of Tony Blair s Labour Party, there must be an enormous attendant sense of relief because if The Sun had leaned the other way, and declared in favour of the Tories, you can be absolutely certain that the boot would be on the other foot right now, and that some hapless Labour MP would be playing the Merchant role of public whipping boy for the low-rent moralists of Wapping.
No matter how politically expedient, or indeed amusing, the episode may be, however, it is also deeply disturbing in what it reveals about contemporary media culture in Britain. The first thing any sensible human being would learn from it is that you re far better off staying a million miles away from Young Conservative events they can only lead to trouble! But there are much more important questions raised about the extent to which newspapers, and tabloid newspapers in particular, are prepared to intrude into the private lives of public figures. Is an individual entitled to take a walk in the countryside with a friend or lover and to assume that they are not being followed and photographed? Is there no right to privacy of any kind? Or are we supposed to accept that the prying lenses of the paparazzi can barge into people s personal lives and private affairs untrammelled, at any time of the day or night? It is an appalling thought, no matter who this week s victim is.
The assumption that the hacks of The Sun are in any position to pontificate on the subject of sleaze is in itself a sick joke. If the telescopic lenses they use with such invasiveness were to be turned on their own sexual activities, there can be no doubt that the results would be unedifying in the extreme. And still they can peddle this prurient shit as if they re doing some kind of public service.
What validity is there in their definition of sleaze, anyway? Piers Merchant s comments on the affair sounded lame and silly, and I m not automatically inclined to have much sympathy for a man in his mid-40s who becomes involved with someone who s only just past the age of consent. But when you think about it: what is actually supposed to be the problem here? His relationship with Anna Cox may well suggest that Piers Merchant is suffering from some form of arrested emotional development, but who gives a fuck? That s probably true of half the MPs in Westminster, not to mention the vast majority of the lecherous old fogeys up in the House of Lords. Are The Sun trying to suggest that sex between a man in his 40s and a woman of 17 should be illegal? And if not, why is it an issue on which Piers Merchant or any other MP should be asked to resign?
There is another layer to all this. If Anna Cox was paid for the story, when was she first in contact with The Sun? Could she have known that she was being photographed with Piers Merchant? And to what extent might she have been operating in collusion with the paper?
When you look at the way stories like this run, it is possible now for newspapers to become involved in a form of entrapment, setting public figures up with women or men who are prepared to sell details of their sexual activities for public consumption? I don t know that there s much that can be done to prevent it, but the stench of hypocrisy is becoming overpowering.
Piers Merchant may have been a sucker for Ms. Cox. Then again, she may have been a sucker for him. But the truth is that the public in general are suckers if they allow themselves to be manipulated on the basis of this kind of tawdry muck-raking.
There are a thousand good reasons for not voting Tory. That Piers Merchant may have had it off with a 17-year-old is not one of them.
Niall Stokes
Editor