Carpeted for keeping the wrong company

Political Commentary

THE OTHER evening, sitting quietly at home, I was musing about the affair of Mr and Mrs Rupert Pennant-Rea and Ms Mary Ellen Synon. I write that it was the affair of Mrs Pennant-Rea as well because she was constrained to appear outside the front door of their house (whose value was variously estimated in the popular prints at anything between £200,000 and £500,000) and, before the television viewers, to read out a statement of what the New Labour Party would call "solidarity" with her husband.

Very well she read it, and very attractive she looked. But I really could not see why she should have been required, or felt herself to be under any obligation, to put on a public performance of this nature. After all, her husband was not a Tory MP. Musing away, I found that I knew two of the parties involved.

Mr Pennant-Rea I did not know. As editor of the Economist, he had a reputation for industry and for a puritanical governance of his own life. Unlike many puritans, he did not refrain from adopting a censorious attitude towards the lives of others. That, at any rate, was what I was told.

His wife I had known since the 1960s, when she was Helen Jay. On the odd occasions when we bumped into each other, I found her funny, open and quite without that conceit which pretty women so often display.

Ms Synon, however, I knew better. Indeed, we had spent a party conference together. We were introduced in the late 1970s by my friend Mr Frank Johnson, then parliamentary sketchwriter of the Daily Telegraph. Ms Synon was at the conference on behalf of the same paper. I believe she went under the title of "Our Political Staff". She also had stories published in the Telegraph under her own name. We - Ms Synon, Mr Johnson and I - had lunch or dinner together on several occasions. In fact she was the first in a distinguished line of Miss Freelunches: young women journalists who turn up at the party conferences and so impress their older, more susceptible, even foolish male colleagues that they do not have to pay for a single meal in the course of the entire week.

She struck me as a nice enough girl, if on the dull side. She certainly did not seem to have a specially vicious temper. I am puzzled by her own explanation of it: that she is an Irish-American financial journalist who has been abandoned or, as she puts it, "dumped" by her lover. What about a Greek-Armenian restaurateur who has paid for a shipment of turbot which, on examination, turns out to be Black Sea catfish? There are numerous categories of person in this world who, one would have thought, might prove considerably more disagreeable than an Irish-American financial journalist, however ill-used in his or her emotional life.

Ill-used Ms Synon clearly considers herself to have been. Whether she was entitled to feel so is not for us to determine. What we can say is that no civilised person would then go away and tell the story to the papers: not in understandable rage - for in the initial shock of sexual rejection, betrayal or jealousy we are all liable to do uncivilised things - but, rather, as part of what the lawyers call a consistent course of conduct.

In her statements Ms Synon has contradicted herself about whether she wanted Mr Pennant-Rea to lose his job at the Bank of England. Perhaps her revenge (a word she used herself) was to consist only in telling her story and having it printed. What happened afterwards was none of her concern. She merely wanted her own version of events to appear before our wondering eyes. That seems as fair an interpretation as any of her position.

The Guardian refused to have anything to do with it. So did the Spectator (where, from Ms Anne Applebaum's account in the current issue, it appears that Ms Synon wished to tell her story in semi-fictive form). Then she turned to the Sunday Mirror, which published the story as if it had found it out for itself, quoting "friends" whose utterances bore a close resemblance to those of the leading lady. The story was then followed up by the whole of what is still called Fleet Street, most notably by the Daily Mail and the Financial Times. It was the latter which, by most accounts, brought about Mr Pennant-Rea's resignation: not so much because of any leaderising on the subject (which tended to be more liberal than, say, the Independent's) as because of the prominence which the City's own paper gave to the story at the beginning of the week.

Its course has been no different from that of the more political "scandals" which do so much from time to time to enliven our national life. At a certain stage, we begin to play the traditional English game of Hunt-the- Issue. The issue is said to be not the sexual adventures, indiscretions or practices of Mr So-and-so (for that has nothing to do with the matter, or so we are given to understand) but something else entirely.

Thus in Mr John Profumo's case the issue was asserted to be security. In Lord Parkinson's case it was whether he had or had not promised to marry Miss Sara Keays and accordingly, or so it was said, whether he was a trustworthy minister. In Mr David Mellor's case it was his acceptance of a free holiday and - something which for some reason is regarded as more blameworthy - a free air ticket.

If all fails, and no issue readily comes to hand, there is a wonderful catch-all provision, comparable to "Conduct prejudicial to Air Force discipline" or "Any breach of common sense is a breach of the school rules". It is "judgement", as in: "Of course, old Rupert is welcome to screw anyone he likes. It's his judgement that I question." Endeavours have also been made to indict him on the Parkinson principle: that he had allegedly promised to marry Ms Synon. But this charge does not seem to have made much headway.

As an issue, the papers have turned to the then passionate couple's activities on the carpet of Mr Eddie George's dressing-room at the Bank, and also to the use of Mr Pennant-Rea's official car for conveying his mistress hither and yon. But if an official car cannot be employed to transport mistresses about the place, what use is it? What is it there for? As to the embraces on the carpet, would there have been such an abundance of censure by the newspapers if it had been Mr and Mrs Pennant-Rea who were so disporting themselves, whether before or after a dinner at, say, the Fishmongers Hall?

I think not. I think the activity would have been regarded as more risky than reprehensible; even, in its way, rather sweet in a middle-aged couple with numerous children of various provenances. In other words, what is being objected to is not the place but the partner; and we should stop pretending otherwise. In all this the only true hero of our times is Mr Steven Norris, the junior minister at Transport. He is separated from his wife, has (or has had) several mistresses and refuses to be bullied - as, alas, Mr Pennant-Rea allowed himself to be.