British Conservative MP Neil Parish announced his resignation on Saturday 30 April. The MP, who has been accused by some of his peers of having seen pornography in the House of Commons, admitted the facts. “I was looking for tractors,” the 65-year-old former farmer told the BBC. “I came across another site with a similar name and looked around for a while, which I shouldn’t have done,” he tried to explain. “But my crime, my greatest crime, is that I went back there a second time and it was on purpose,” he admitted, tearfully, conjuring up a “moment of madness.”
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph published on Saturday morning (in English), he hinted that he might have opened the page “accidentally”. “We support (Neil Parish’s) decision to step down as MP,” said a Conservative spokesman for Tiverton and Honiton, where Neil Parish was elected in 2019.
The announcement of his resignation comes after Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party launched an inquiry into the incident on Wednesday. The MP’s name has not been released, but Neil Parish has reported himself to Parliament’s committee on MPs’ conduct, the Conservatives, who suspended him from their group during the inquiry period, said on Friday.
The elected official then announced that he would “continue to fulfill his role as deputy during the investigation”. Many MPs insisted that if the allegations against him were true, he would resign before the inquiry was completed. “Neil Parish must think we were born yesterday. Boris Johnson’s Conservatives are a national embarrassment,” MP Angela Rayner said.
The Labor MP found herself at the center of a misogynist attack last weekend after anonymous Tory MPs accused her of enjoying distracting the Prime Minister by crossing and uncrossing her legs in Parliament, Boris Johnson commented on Monday as “sexist.” and misogynistic bullshit”.
Also last week, the Sunday Times revealed that three opposition ministers and two MPs had been charged with “misconduct of a sexual nature”. They are among 56 MPs who have been reported to an office responsible for registering these complaints, set up after the #MeToo movement.