The Whittingdale ‘scandal’ shows why Britain’s free press is more responsible than its critics

For weeks, Westminster has been full of rumours about the private life of a certain cabinet member. It was said he had started to visit a dominatrix in Earl’s Court but ended up falling in love with her and taking her to official functions. Like a Westminster remake of the film Pretty Woman, in fact, but with the Culture Secretary, John Whittingdale, playing the part of Richard Gere. There was much comment in Parliament about this, and jokes about what London is coming to if an MP has to travel all the way to Earl’s Court for such services, when they used to be available a stone’s throw away from the Commons. And on it went.

The story did not appear in the press for a simple reason: it was, in most part, an invention. Politicians gossip like fishwives, and political journalists know them to be deeply unreliable sources about each other’s private lives.