Newmark and Totty

Review: The Devil in the Marshalsea b... Dear Hachette,

Newmark and Totty

This case is getting more and more ridiculous. Now we learn that the Tory MP who’s just quit was groomed – and I use that term advisedly – over months. He was contacted by a reporter pretending to be a young Tory supporting PR girl. The conversations were initiated by this “girl”. They were conducted initially on Twitter. And the first conversations were about Wimbledon. That means they were two months ago or more. Later the conversation went private. This happens in real life. After quite some time again, the “girl” sent this middle-aged man some slightly more fruity photos. She sent the first ones. Not him.

This is not a simple public interest matter. This is a straightforward case of entrapment. A man was minding his own business and received some messages from someone. He accepted that. Gradually the conversations developed. This is normally called “grooming”. If the MP was a woman, and the reporter sent similar messages, there would be absolute hell to pay, and for damn good reason. Entrapment means creating a situation and then persuading someone else to participate, before the trap is sprung. This was exactly such a case, which took a long time to develop. The MP concerned was played beautifully, I suppose. BUT, so far as he was aware, he was dealing with an adult woman. A woman who was seducing him over the phone.

Yes, he was a married man. He was a berk. He forgot the first and most basic principle of mature life, which is that if a gorgeous young woman starts to chat up a portly later-middle-aged man, there is almost certainly a reason for it. And it won’t be sex. Not in her mind, anyway. However, be that as it may, this man was deceived, groomed, and entrapped.

There is no public interest in this. Adult men and women will have affairs. It ain’t necessarily the business of the public unless national secrets are at stake.

The reporter should be condemned for this and never work for the press again.