As teenage boys and tissue companies rejoice all over the place, let’s celebrate International Masturbation Day (yes, that’s a real thing) with some of Westminster’s most infamous wankers.
Neil Parish
The former Conservative MP for Tiverton and Honiton, in the west country, resigned in disgrace last year, when he admitted to watching porn in the House of Commons… twice!
What may have been forgiven as an honest boomer moment – going on the internet and immediately stumbling across porn – aroused extreme suspicion when it happened a second time.
Parish told BBC Politics South West: “Funnily enough, it was tractors I was looking at. I did get into another website that had a very similar name and I watched it for a bit, which I shouldn’t have done.
“But my crime – biggest crime – is that, on another occasion, I went in a second time.”
His dramatic (but not unexpected) resignation ended Parish’s almost 12 years as an MP. However, Parish has recently said he would consider standing as an MP in the next general election, as he has “unfinished business”.
Whatever that business is, hopefully he’ll do it in private.
Damien Green
The former first secretary of state under Prime Minister Theresa May (remember her?) was sacked in 2017, nearly a decade after he lied to colleagues about porn found on his House of Commons computer.
Following a police raid in 2008, Green denied knowledge of the inappropriate material. However, his statements were later found to be “inaccurate and misleading”.
Former Scotland Yard officer Neil Lewis claimed the device contained thousands of thumbnail images of legal pornography.
He told the BBC: “The computer was in Mr Green’s office, on his desk, logged in, his account, his name.
“In between browsing pornography, he was sending emails from his account, his personal account, reading documents … it was ridiculous to suggest anybody else could have done it.”
In February this year, Green lost his bid to become MP for the Weald of Kent constituency. So, that could be the end for Theresa May’s former “right-hand” man.
Mark Garnier
Still serving as a Conservative MP for Wyre Forest in Worcestershire, Garnier was sacked from his role as a Brexit minister under Theresa May in 2018 for inappropriate behaviour.
He admitted to the Mail on Sunday that he had called his secretary “sugar tits”, and later sent her into a sex shop in Soho to buy two vibrators while he waited outside.
Garnier defended his actions as “good-humoured high jinks”, vehemently denying it was sexual harassment.
While the incidents took place in 2010, they didn’t come to the fore until 2017, when a series of allegations involving MPs in sexual harassment cases arose following Hollywood’s #MeToo movement.
But instead of being sacked as an MP and publicly humiliated, Garnier was allowed to continue. Because he’s worth it? Absolutely not.
And finally
Why is Westminster so full of wankers? Politics seems to be dominated by toxic masculinity and bravado – you only have to glance at PMQs (if you can stomach it).
With a more diverse Parliament than ever before, we can only hope that time, social progress, and general elections will eventually rid us of gutter-dwelling, self-serving onanists.