I’ve nothing against people viewing legal erotica, for me it’s one of those ‘you do you’ things, but there is a time and a place for doing that. At home, on holiday or even, at a pinch discreetly in a public toilet are reasonably acceptable places, but not the chamber of the House of Commons. That I’m afraid is completely out of order.

Recently a Conservative MP was discovered by another Tory MP to be watching erotica on his mobile whilst in the Commons chamber and whilst a debate was in process. It’s probably one of the worst places to be caught out looking at porn and indeed a stupid place to do this as the MP must have known that they would almost certainly be caught out doing it.

The MP was later identified as Neil Parish the MP for Tiverton and Honiton in Devon. He tried to ride out the storm that his porn viewing caused but he could not and eventually agreed to step down from his seat in the Commons. Whether this decision was voluntary or whether this decision was forced on him by the party machinery is debatable but leaving this MP in place would have compounded the problems that the Conservatives face in the run up to local elections that are being seen as a mini referendum on the performance of this Conservative government.

Mr Parish represented a very safe seat for the Conservatives and the party gained 60% of the vote in the last General Election with Labour in a distant second place. It’s such a safe seat that I tend to agree with Guido Fawkes’s comment that if this byelection looks even remotely interesting from a political observers point of view then it would be a sign that the Tories are in trouble.

I don’t see how the Tories could have fielded Mr Parish again after this, even if he had not resigned. This is the sort of gaffe that haunts a candidate and would have been brought up at any and every opportunity by the opponents of the Conservatives. Much better to try to draw a line under the situation and risk a byelection now with a fresh candidate than have a greater chance of losing the seat at the next General Election with Mr Parish as candidate. If they had kept Mr Parish as candidate then Labour and the Lib Dems in the local area would have kept this scandal and issue alive and used it as a weapon against the Tories.

This was an utterly stupid action. Why on earth would he do this knowing that it is likely to be seen and possibly reported? Is he so arrogant that he thought he was in some way untouchable or is he as thick as a brick? This man has thrown away a lucrative career as an MP and for what? A few minutes browsing porn when he should not have been doing so. Couldn’t he have waited until he was in a more private place to get his porn jollies? It seems not.

If nothing else this case has given some small amount of validity to the claims that Britain’s MP’s are a ‘bunch of wankers’. It is also a scandal that illustrates that that some of Members of Parliament consider themselves as above the normal law and of employment practise and are unwilling to abide by workplace rules that in the private sector would see an employee sacked on the spot for watching porn in work time.