Is what Conor Burns did really so appalling?

There are times when I feel like certain rakes must have done when they realised that the Regency period was suddenly morphing into the Victorian one. Not that I feel especially rakish. Just that there are times when you see the new rules of sex and think: ‘Well, I guess there’ll be none of that from now on.’

Take the allegations made against Conor Burns MP. Last week, Burns was fired from his ministerial job and had the Conservative party whip suspended. There are efforts to take his name off the list of people put forward for a knighthood in Boris Johnson’s farewell honours list.

What is the cause of all this? Here is the allegation in its full, disgusting detail. According to all national newspapers, Burns was fired because he was seen at the bar of the Conservative party conference putting his hand on another man’s thigh.

‘His thigh?’ I hear you say. Yes, ladies and gentleman: his thigh. Burns did not attempt to touch any of the man’s more erogenous zones. He did not stick his tongue down his throat. He did not pin him to a wall and ram a hand down his pants. Burns put a hand on the man’s thigh and the man did not complain. He still hasn’t.

It was other people in the bar who witnessed this appalling crime (now escalated to a ‘grope’) who sprang to report the issue and get Burns fired. Almost as though some people were waiting for just such an excuse. He had just mocked the Prime Minister’s ‘Instagram diplomacy’. For his part, Burns admits he was a couple of sheets to the wind at the time and also on some medication that might have made those sheets a little more numerous and the wind a little gustier.

Naturally there has been no due process around this. Burns has pointed out that nobody in the party sought to get his side of the story or even enquire as to what might have happened. It wasn’t even a case of wham, bam, thank you man. It was just thigh touch – bam. Which is the sort of justice you can come up with only because there is such a mad sexual counter-revolution under way.

That being the case, let me throw myself onto everybody’s mercy by issuing a luridly frank confession. I have committed this crime myself, on multiple occasions. What is more, I have had the crime done unto me. Sometimes the crime has been committed by a man. On special occasions (weddings, anniversaries, Spectator parties etc) it has even been done to me by a woman. Only last week, a woman put a hand on my thigh in Norfolk. Yes, in Norfolk, ladies and gentleman. Not a corner of the land is safe from this new depravity.

Yet on none of these occasions have I felt defiled. Perhaps I was born in another era. Still, the rules of this era were invented by an ass.

Before I go further, let me issue a necessary disclaimer. I am not a friend of Conor Burns. I do not believe I have ever even met him. So I am not trying to run to the defence of a mate or anything like that. I simply think it absurd that anybody should lose their job for something so completely innocuous. And at the Conservative party conference, no less.

It is some years since the exigencies of work and cruel employers have forced me to attend the monstrosity that is the party political conference. But I can tell you that they are all, without exception, appalling beyond comprehension. The halls are filled with standing ovations for people whom those standing are about to turn against. The halls and side rooms are filled with fat lobbyists and hungry young networkers. The fringes are filled with the sort of events that no one would pay to enter, though I would pay a goodly sum to escape.

In my own experience, the one thing that made the Conservative party conference any fun at all was that it is probably the gayest event in the UK social calendar. The Labour party conference is too filled with earnest hermaphrodites for any fun to be had. If you suggested sex at the Liberal Democrat conference you would probably be hauled out by the police – unless of course you were advocating sex with a minor. The Conservative party conference, by contrast, is an event so gay that it is almost unparalleled. The only two places I know that are almost as gay are Eurovision and the GAY club in Soho, and it’s still a photo finish.

Here’s a still more shocking fact. Not all of the predatoriness – if that is what flirting is – is from older man to younger, or from more-advanced-career person towards less-advanced-career person. That’s one of the myths of the #MeToo age. But since women do not need to be mentioned in this particular case, let me impart a terrible truth: in such exchanges it is not always completely clear who is taking advantage of whom. Assuming anyone is being taken advantage of at all.

I can say with some confidence that when you get to a certain age in any profession, a certain type of younger person is delighted to cosy up to you. And while you may wish to keep the whole thing professional, that does not always mean that the younger person does. Many people wanting to climb the greasy pole of politics, in particular, are perfectly happy to flirt with an older gay man. Sometimes with the aim of following through, sometimes through actual attraction, sometimes not. An alarming number of men who do this happen to be straight.

Obviously, if you are attractive this happens somewhat more. Yet, shocking though it may be, some people on the way up are not averse to flirting with people who are not necessarily God’s gift and may even look a tad porcine. Most adults are more than capable of playing this game – brushing off a hand where it is not wanted and allowing it to linger where it is. It is no crime. It’s what we used to call fun.