The Lady's Knights

None of the unfolding "revelations" about the 1980s is news to anyone who has been paying attention. But one does stand out.

As has been readily available for years, in 1987, Peter Morrison was caught in a public convenience with a boy of 15, compelling him to agree to stand down at the subsequent General Election, which did not occur until 1992.

None of this precluded his continuation as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party under Norman Tebbit (who it has long been a matter of record knew all about him and did nothing) or as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Margaret Thatcher, whose 1990 Leadership campaign he organised, having been one of the first MPs to ask her to stand all the way back in 1975.

Read that over until it sinks in: he was the Prime Minister's closest political aide, and he was running her Leadership campaign, three years after she had required him to promise not to seek re-election on account of his having been found committing a sexual act in a public place with a boy of fifteen.

She secured a knighthood for him, as she did for Jimmy Savile, Cyril Smith and Laurens van der Post. However, it did not take her four attempts, as it did for Savile; in the end, she just had to overrule the entire vetting process.

Nor, unless I am very much mistaken, was Morrison ever on This Is Your Life. Whereas Savile somehow managed to be on it twice. On the second occasion, Thatcher, as Prime Minister, delivered an utterly fawning recorded tribute.

That she retains any reputation whatever is testament to the sheer malevolent, herd-like uselessness of allegedly the freest and most diverse media in the world.