Are Tories faced with another sleaze scandal?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2022

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Crispin Blunt, a Conservative MP, was forced to apologise today after he tweeted support last night for Imran Ahmad Khan, another Tory MP who was found guilty of sexual assault. His statement called the verdict 'a dreadful miscarriage of justice' that relied on ‘lazy tropes of LGBT+ people'.

‘The condemnation has been pretty universal. I haven’t spoken to anyone that has who has stuck up for him [Crispin Blunt].’ - Lucy Fisher

In the wake of the David Warburton scandal last week, does the Conservative party have a more widespread culture problem?

Also on the podcast, 50 more fines have been made for partying in Westminster during the lockdown. How serious is this?

Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and Lucy Fisher, the chief political commentator at Times Radio.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is sponsored by Canacord Genuity Wealth Management,
0:04.3	award-winning Wealth Managers who go above and beyond to support and guide you.
0:09.1	Visit candewelth.com to start building your wealth with confidence.
0:16.8	Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots and Spectators Daily Politics Podcast.
0:20.6	I'm Katie Paul and I'm joined by Isvah Hardman and Times Radio's Chief Political Commentator,
0:25.6	Lucy Fisher. So leave the news today as an apology from the Conservative MP, Crispon Blunt.
0:33.7	Isvah, can you just bring us up to date on what he is apologising for?
0:38.8	So this follows the conviction of Imran Armaghan who until recently was a conservative MP. He's
0:45.8	been suspended and now expelled from the party and he was convicted yesterday of sexual assault
0:52.0	against a 15-year-old boy in 2008. And we sentenced it at a later date so we don't know
0:59.3	about the consequences of it in terms of whether he'll automatically lose his seat or if
1:03.9	we have a by-election and all that sort of thing. But what then happened was Crispon Blunt,
1:10.8	former Justice Minister, current chair of a cross-party committee of MPs on LGBT rights across
1:19.0	the world, he posted a statement criticizing the verdict saying he was a pulled and distraught at it.
1:26.5	It was an international scandal with dreadful wider implications for millions of LGBT
1:32.0	plus Muslims around the world and that the case have relied on lazy tropes about LGBT plus people
1:38.1	that we might have thought we had put behind us decades ago. I hope for the return of Imran
1:43.2	Armaghan to the public service that has exemplified his life to date. At that point all hell broke
1:50.1	loose because it was not only an MP questioning the verdict of a court, it was a former Justice
1:56.4	Minister questioning the verdict of a court, even though Blunt said he'd sat in for some of the trial,
2:02.0	he obviously wasn't in for the whole of the trial. And in and of itself it was quite a troubling
2:08.4	thing for an MP to do, although it's not the first time in recent years that toys have complained
	...

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