Christmas was less than two weeks away when Theresa May faced what was expected to be a knife-edge vote engineered by hard Brexit Tories to have her sacked amid the political paralysis of 2018. In what was ultimately just a stay of execution, the embattled prime minister survived by a 83 votes but a shadow remains even today over the decision to reinstate the Tory whip to Charlie Elphicke and Andrew Griffiths, two MPs accused of sexually inappropriate conduct, so they could vote. Griffiths was subsequently cleared by a parliamentary inquiry. More than two years on – as Elphicke was convicted on Thursday of sexual assault charges – the move to bring him back into the fold during May’s tenure as prime minister has been described as “appalling” by Anna Soubry, who was a Tory MP at the time.
“If she did know about it it’s quite remarkable that she let it happen, and having found out about it she could have done something about it,” said Soubry. Before his political career was abruptly halted by his suspension from the parliamentary party in November 2017, Elphicke had been an ambitious backbencher whose role as MP for a Brexit “frontline” constituency, Dover and Deal, allowed for an intermittent national profile. Despite being a key figure at one point in the so-called 301 group of MPs pressing for the party to follow a more radical direction, his only more senior role beyond the backbenches had been as a junior whip during a brief spell until 2016. Having backed the wrong horse during the 2016 referendum he also subsequently sought to pivot towards the new pole of power in his party by talking up the merits of a no-deal Brexit. Then came the allegations by a young parliamentary worker who said that Elphicke had sexually assaulted her twice. There was sympathy from colleagues at the period of limbo followed without charges while an even more bitter rift opened up between party HQ and Elphicke, who was backed by his local association. Even Soubry, who said she believed there was no smoke without fire when it came to the sort of accusations faced by Elphicke, said: “I felt he was treated very badly in the sense that he had all these allegations hanging over his head for some time.” But that sympathy went only so far. Some speak of a colleague who was described as “bombastic” and was inclined to swim at the top of the current. One other woman who had been an MP recently told the Guardian of Elphicke: “Smarmy bugger, suspect where there is smoke, there is fire. Tried it on with me a bit.” She praised the role of two female Conservative MPs in dealing with the allegations, Margot James and Anne Milton, who she said would “never have dreamed” of putting party before doing the right thing. Soubry says that too often the opposite has happened. James put the young parliamentary worker in touch with Milton, then deputy chief whip, who advised the woman that she should consider speaking to the police. But it was another woman, Elphicke’s wife, Natalie, who was his staunchest and most vocal defender throughout, accusing the party HQ of tipping off the media before he was informed of his suspension. In the 2019 election she won her husband’s former seat for the Conservatives. A credible candidate in her own right with a background in law and Conservative policymaking, some sceptics nevertheless suggested she had been keeping the seat “warm” for her husband. Now that he is facing a prison sentence, Natalie Elphicke has now also detached herself from him, tweeting less than an hour after the verdict that it “ends her 25 year marriage to the only man I have ever loved.” • This article was amended on 4 October 2020. Anne Milton was deputy chief whip, not chief whip as an earlier version said.