Boris Johnson urged to sack Chris Pincher MP after claims he groped two men
Chris Pincher MP speaks in the George Bryan Centre in Tamworth (Image: Twitter Screenshot)
Boris Johnson is being urged to remove the whip from Tory MP Chris Pincher following claims he drunkenly groped two men.
Pincher, MP for Tamworth, resigned as deputy chief whip on Thursday (30 June), saying he had drunk “far too much” and “embarrassed myself and other people” on a night out.
It’s been alleged that Pincher groped two men at the Carlton Club in St. James, London. A government source told Sky News that at least one of the men is an MP.
Now, Labour MPs are demanding Johnson remove Pincher from the party.
Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner tweeted her disgust, saying: “There can be no question of the Conservatives sweeping a potential sexual assault under the carpet. Boris Johnson must now answer how Chris Pincher can remain a Conservative MP at all.”
There can be no question of the Conservatives sweeping a potential sexual assault under the carpet.
Boris Johnson must now answer how Chris Pincher can remain a Conservative MP at all.
Standards in public life have been utterly degraded on this PM’s watch.
— Angela Rayner ? (@AngelaRayner) June 30, 2022
Labour MP Yvette Cooper said Pincher must be suspended while a formal investigation takes place.
“This is about sexual assault,” she added, per the BBC.
Labour MP Ellie Reeves told Sky News that Conservatives are “mired in sleaze”.
It “speaks volumes that Chris Pincher hasn’t been suspended yet”, she said, adding that for Conservatives to “sweep this under the carpet isn’t good enough”.
Labour MP Ellie Reeves says it looks like the Conservative party are trying to “sweep this under the carpet and that isn’t good enough”.
She believes it ‘speaks volumes that Chris Pincher hasn’t been suspended yet’.https://t.co/vYWnBaOE2f? Sky 501, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/lx8q5Xiz8g
— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 1, 2022
Tory Wales secretary Simon Hart said he was “very sad” about the reports, but declined to weigh in on Pincher’s future, saying it was for the Conservative chief whip to decide.
“It makes me sad for everyone who’s been involved in these things,” Hart said. “I think it is entirely right, that the chief whip and others take a view today about what is the appropriate course of action.
“Of course, if there are those who are victims of this or who wish to raise [a] complaint, they can do so,” he added.
Pincher was elected as MP for Tamworth in 2010, and won a majority of 19,000 in the last general election.
He previously quit the whips’ office and voluntarily referred himself to police in 2017 following that he made an unwanted sexual advance on former Olympic rower Alex Story.
It comes a week after the Conservatives lost two by-elections, in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton after two MPs stood down following sex scandals
Wakefield was won by gay Labour MP Simon Lightwood after Conservative MP Imran Ahmad Khan resigned and was jailed for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy.
Khan was sentenced to 18 months in prison after forcing a teenager to drink alcohol and dragging him upstairs at a house party, where he assaulted him in January 2008.
Tiverton and Honiton was won by the Lib Dems; the by-election was triggered when then-Tory MP Neil Parish stood down, having admitted to watching porn in parliament.
