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From Lloyd George to Jeremy Thorpe, there's something in Liberal DNA that breeds sex scandals

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For connoisseurs of the Liberal Democrats’ innate susceptibility to scandal, the past few weeks have offered rich pickings.

First there was the resignation of one of their few heavy hitters inside the Coalition, Chris Huhne, who had lied about allegations that he had given his speeding points to his then wife, whom he subsequently abandoned.

Then came the news that as many as ten women, some of them Lib Dem councillors and activists, had complained about inappropriate advances from the party’s chief executive, Lord Rennard — allegations which, it turns out, were known to Nick Clegg as early as 2008.

Resigned: Chris Huhne lied about allegations that he had given his speeding points to his then wife, whom he subsequently abandoned

And finally, hanging over the party like a sour smell is the shadow of the man-mountain Cyril Smith. 

The late MP for Rochdale was one of the Liberals’ most recognisable figures in the Seventies and Eighties. Now we learn police believe he was a serial abuser of young boys in local children’s homes.

The strange thing about all this is that political scandals are usually bound up with power.

Conventionally, parties in high office become lazy and complacent. Taking success for granted, they sink into arrogance, and hubris leads inevitably to nemesis.

  More... It's called a free press for a reason, Mr Clegg: Fury as 'Liberal' leader calls journalists 'self-appointed detectives' for exposing scandal he and his party covered up Groping claims WERE part of reason Lord Rennard was forced out as Lib Dem chief executive in 2009, Clegg admits Britain's most famous female judge arrested over claims she lied to police in Chris Huhne speeding points case 'We are coming up on the rails': Farage boasts that UKIP could defy the odds to win three-horse race in Eastleigh by-election

The Lib Dems, however, have not come anywhere near being a majority party since World War I, when they were plain Liberals. 

Instead, they have bumped along on the fringes of politics, a haven for the eccentric and a home for voters who can’t stand the two major parties.

Oddly, though, this has not stopped them racking up a record of persistent misconduct that puts their political rivals to shame.

Goodness knows the Tories and Labour have had their fair share of rogues and misdemeanours.

Allegations: As many as ten women, some of them Lib Dem councillors and activists, had complained about inappropriate advances from the party's chief executive, Lord Rennard (pictured)

But neither can boast a leader who wrote illicit love letters in Cabinet meetings, a leader who cuckolded his own son or, most shocking of all, a leader who stood trial for plotting to murder his homosexual lover.

Perhaps there is something in the Lib Dems’ DNA that explains why its senior figures so often court disaster.

Take, for example, the Liberal Party’s founding father Lord Palmerston, who twice served as prime minister in the 1850s and 1860s. Since he was named as a co-respondent in a divorce suit when he was a venerable 78, it is hardly surprising Queen Victoria regarded him as ‘immoral’. 

Indeed, the story goes that when Palmerston was staying one night at Windsor Castle, he crept into the bedroom of one of Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting, and was only repelled when his victim screamed for help.

Even that Liberal titan William Gladstone, one of the best prime ministers Britain has ever had, was not immune from the whiff of scandal.

Queen Victoria regarded the Liberal Party's founding father Lord Palmerston (pictured) as 'immoral'

Though he was popularly regarded as a model of righteousness, Gladstone had an extraordinary sex drive. 

Intensely repressed, he took to wandering London at night so he could find ‘fallen women’ and rescue them from a life of sin.

But there was more to this than Christian charity. Tormented by lust, he would then whip himself as punishment, carefully recording every episode in his diary.

But while Gladstone kept his urges under control, the Liberal prime minister Herbert Henry Asquith, who led Britain during the Edwardian era and into World War I, was a rather more self-indulgent figure.

His fondness for the bottle, which meant he often swayed while addressing the Commons, earned him the nickname ‘Squiffy’. Perhaps more disturbing, though, was Asquith’s strange love life. 

When a doctor advised his wife, the toweringly snobbish Margot, to sleep in a separate bedroom, Asquith began his career of groping other women, including the wives of his political colleagues.

Winston Churchill’s wife Clemmie complained the Liberal leader was forever trying to look down her dress, while the socialite Lady Ottoline Morrell claimed Asquith would ‘take a lady’s hand as she sat beside him on the sofa and make her feel his erected instrument under his trousers’.

If the allegations about Lord Rennard are to be believed, life at the top of the Liberal Party has not changed much in the century since.

Yet Asquith’s antics did not stop there. Having developed a crush on his daughter’s friend Venetia Stanley, who was 35 years his junior, he bombarded her for years with explicit love letters. Even during the slaughter of World War I, he scribbled secret messages to her in Cabinet meetings.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the wartime Coalition booted out Asquith in 1916 and replaced him with his Chancellor, David Lloyd George. Almost incredibly, however, Lloyd George was so crooked he made Asquith look like a paragon of probity.

As Chancellor, Lloyd George had been accused of secretly buying shares in a company associated with Marconi, which had been awarded a huge contract to build radio stations across the British Empire. 

Man-mountain: Cyril Smith was one of the Liberals' most recognisable figures in the Seventies and Eighties. Now we learn police believe he was a serial abuser of young boys in local children's homes

David Lloyd George carried out a decades-long affair with his secretary, Frances Stevenson, and he is also believed to have seduced or molested scores of society ladies, Liberal donors and colleagues' wives

Most people thought that he was guilty, but somehow Lloyd George managed to weasel out of it.More shocking was his staggering sexual incontinence. Not only did Lloyd George (aptly known as ‘the Goat’) carry out a decades-long affair with his secretary, Frances Stevenson, he is also believed to have seduced or molested scores of society ladies, Liberal donors and colleagues’ wives.

The Goat even stooped, according to some accounts, to cuckolding his own son. He was, said one political aide, ‘mental on matters of sex’.

As if that were not enough, as prime minister, Lloyd George sold honours for cash, but somehow, as always, he managed to escape scot-free.

In 1922, however, the Tories walked out of Lloyd George’s Coalition. The Liberals’ days in the sun were over, their prospects shattered beyond repair by the emergence of the  Labour Party and the devastating feud between Lloyd George and Asquith.

For 50 years they slumbered, led by a succession of well-meaning mediocrities. But by the Seventies, their chance seemed to have come as the economy plunged and voters recoiled from the shop-soiled Ted Heath and Harold Wilson.

It is outrageous for Nick Clegg to attack what he calls 'self-appointed detectives' in the Press for exposing their shabby behaviour

By then their leader was the dashing and debonair Jeremy Thorpe. Yet even as he prepared to lead a Liberal breakthrough, his career was about to implode.

In 1961, Thorpe had met a stable boy, Norman Scott, with whom he had a brief affair. After Thorpe dumped him, however, Scott became obsessed with the idea that he had been mistreated disgracefully.

Fourteen years later, with rumours sweeping Westminster, Scott was befriended by an airline pilot called Andrew Newton. One night, Newton took Scott for a drive across Exmoor.

There, according to Scott, Newton drew a Mauser and shot Scott’s dog, Rinka, before trying to kill Scott. 

But the gun jammed, Newton fled and Scott survived to tell the story.

In 1978, the Crown sensationally charged Thorpe with conspiracy to have Scott killed. 

According to the prosecution, the Liberal leader had diverted money from party donors and arranged through a bizarre series of intermediaries — including a Welsh fruit-machine magnate and a cut-price carpet dealer — for Newton to murder his former lover.

When the case came to court a year later, Thorpe denied everything. And after a notorious summing up by Mr Justice Cantley, who denounced poor Scott as a crook and a liar, the jury found Thorpe not guilty.

Still, his political career was over. The Liberal leadership passed to David Steel, a man of stereotypical Scottish seriousness, who arranged a merger with the Social Democrats.

But the old Liberal spirit evidently survived. From Paddy Ashdown’s extra- marital affair to Charles Kennedy’s battle with alcoholism, Lib Dem leaders have often made the headlines for the wrong reasons.

Even the party’s failed leadership contenders have been a motley and often frankly rather seedy bunch.

Think of Mark Oaten, who turned out to be a great favourite with London’s rent boys; or Simon Hughes, who denied being gay until it emerged that he had been using a chat service called Man Talk; or that prize clown Lembit Opik, who dated a TV weather girl and a Cheeky Girl and has since reinvented himself as a reality TV contestant.

Why on earth Liberalism, the oldest of all our political traditions, attracts these characters is beyond me.

But one thing is certain, it is outrageous for Nick Clegg to attack what he calls ‘self-appointed detectives’ in the Press for exposing their shabby behaviour.






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