Is what Conor Burns did really so appalling?

There are times when I feel like certain rakes must have done when they realised that the Regency period was suddenly morphing into the Victorian one. Not that I feel especially rakish. Just that there are times when you see the new rules of sex and think: ‘Well, I guess there’ll be none of that from now on.’

Take the allegations made against Conor Burns MP. Last week, Burns was fired from his ministerial job and had the Conservative party whip suspended. There are efforts to take his name off the list of people put forward for a knighthood in Boris Johnson’s farewell honours list.

What is the cause of all this? Here is the allegation in its full, disgusting detail. According to all national newspapers, Burns was fired because he was seen at the bar of the Conservative party conference putting his hand on another man’s thigh.

‘His thigh?’ I hear you say. Yes, ladies and gentleman: his thigh. Burns did not attempt to touch any of the man’s more erogenous zones. He did not stick his tongue down his throat. He did not pin him to a wall and ram a hand down his pants. Burns put a hand on the man’s thigh and the man did not complain. He still hasn’t.

It was other people in the bar who witnessed this appalling crime (now escalated to a ‘grope’) who sprang to report the issue and get Burns fired. Almost as though some people were waiting for just such an excuse. He had just mocked the Prime Minister’s ‘Instagram diplomacy’. For his part, Burns admits he was a couple of sheets to the wind at the time and also on some medication that might have made those sheets a little more numerous and the wind a little gustier.

Naturally there has been no due process around this.