BY MICHAEL FALLON
FIRST, I offer an unqualified apology for certain inappropriate behaviours on my part which fell short of the standard required of a cabinet minister. I am truly sorry, and truly sad.
However, it is to be remembered that all these incidents took place in a very different time, in the very different culture of October 2017.
This benighted era had social attitudes unlike our own. Young people, especially the very young, will not remember it but sexual conduct in the workplace was considered de rigueur.
Back then, girls were altogether racier and more good-humoured about flirtatious banter. If a colleague said her hands were cold and I suggested she warm them on my red-hot ramrod, seriously it’s like a three-bar fire down there, nobody would do any more than giggle salaciously.
They seem alien to us now, those days in which every workplace was like a Carry On film and researchers considered falling pregnant just an occupational hazard.
But times have changed and texting a young, attractive MP, the kind who is certainly inviting attention, an unsolicited photograph of your nether regions is no longer acceptable. And rightly so.
We must all of us recognise that the culture has changed. What was unfrowned on last Wednesday is appallingly dreadful in hindsight.
But we should remember that the people of the future, perhaps of December 2017, may look harshly on us and that it is unfair to judge the past by the standards of the present.
For now, let us just be glad those dark days are behind us. The dark days of October 2017.
