After another scandal in the cesspit of Pestminster, who will stop the rot?

The disturbing allegations made by a TV producer against a Tory mayoral candidate are just the latest ignominy from a political class that lurches from one tawdry affair to the next, writes Joy Lo Dico

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Why would Daisy Goodwin, screenwriter and TV producer, have made such an accusation against David Cameron’s former special advisor Daniel Korski? Ten years ago, after an informal meeting about making a television show about international trade for small businesses, Korski placed his hand on her breast uninvited. Or so she said.

The timing is terrible for him. Then just a backroom boy, Korski is now on the cusp of greatness as front runner to become the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London (his rival, Shaun Bailey, is mired in his own Partygate allegations). Korski was in a hustings when he heard The Times would be putting the story on the front page. He thought it serious enough to leave the meeting. And then he wrote a statement to counter the allegation – which he, of course, denies.

The main thrust of his complaint seemed to be that there has been no complaint. “Nothing was raised at the time,” he said. Goodwin says that, while she didn’t feel threatened, she was surprised and humiliated and went back to the office laughing it off. Who could she have complained to then?

“Nothing was raised with me seven years ago,” Mr Korski goes on to say, a reference to 2017 when Goodwin wrote an article for the Radio Times describing how an unnamed SpAd had groped her several years previously. Goodwin acted graciously. It was the height of #MeToo. Instead of naming him, which would have likely killed his career before right or wrong could be established, she stepped back to reflect on how it was important to report these things, if not for herself, for younger female staff who would have been less confident telling a man to leave them alone.

“And even now, I’m not aware there was an official complaint,” adds Korski, petulantly. But if she had, Korski might well have asked why Goodwin couldn’t have done it through less formal channels. (Ahem, she did, of course, in the Radio Times.) What is really being said is that the onus has always been on the accuser: to reach out to him, to forewarn him, to raise this to a formal level or back off.

By his denial, he has effectively called Goodwin a liar. In 2017, when the Telegraph followed up Goodwin’s Radio Times piece and named him, Korski called the allegation both false and “totally bizarre” – a query on Goodwin’s grasp on reality.

Why would Goodwin raise it now? Because memories in politics are short. The “Pestminster” scandals of 2017 seem far away and have found no champion. Covid, the energy crisis and the defenestration of two Prime Ministers since then mean the agenda has moved on. Political ambition does not like to be stalled by investigations; careers rely on things being “forgotten”. It is now part of a culture of a government rotten to the core: one scandal makes you think the last no longer matters: it does.

Goodwin is reminding us not just of her own experience but of #MeToo more widely: there are so many historic allegations because what are you meant to do if someone denies it?

If Korski is so emphatic that this allegation is without merit, he could always make an official complaint himself. His lawyers might be able to construct a case for libel against the Telegraph, which named him in 2017. The same again goes for Goodwin and The Times after this week’s article in which the screenwriter noted that a hand on her breast would technically qualify as sexual assault. If he’d heard the gossip in 2013, he could have sued her for slander. But taking someone to court is hard, for men as well as women.

Or he could go peacably and ask CCHQ or the Cabinet Office to investigate and resolve whether either side owed the other an apology or further sanction. Goodwin seems to be a reasonable human. But he hasn’t, has he?