A British MP who had been suspended by the Conservative Party – the same as Prime Minister Boris Johnson – announced on Saturday (30) his resignation, after admitting to having watched pornographic films twice on his cell phone while in Parliament. “It was a moment of madness,” he said.
Conservatives suspended Neil Parish on Friday after he himself denounced himself to the House Standards Commissioner. Earlier, the deputy had said that he would remain in office while an investigation was carried out. “In the end, I could see the fury and damage it was causing my family and my electoral association. It just wasn’t worth continuing,” he told the BBC in an interview on Saturday.
Parish, a farmer, said that the first time he saw the explicit material, he did so by accident, when looking for tractors on a similarly named website. “I watched for a while, what I shouldn’t have done,” he said. “But my biggest crime is that, on another occasion, I watched the video deliberately. I was sitting there waiting to vote on the side of the House.”
Asked what was going through his mind, he described it as “a moment of madness”.
Earlier this week, British media reported a complaint from a minister, who said she saw a male colleague viewing pornographic material while sitting next to her in the House of Commons. The same lawmaker, the colleague said, watched explicit material during a committee hearing.
“I’m not proud of what I was doing,” Parish said, adding that he had no intention of allowing others around him to see what he was watching. “I’m not going to defend what I did. What I did was absolutely wrong. I must have completely lost my senses.”
In an interview with The Times newspaper published prior to the announcement of the resignation, Parish’s wife said she was unaware of her husband’s previous similar behavior and that he was a “lovable person”.
“It’s all very embarrassing,” Sue Parish said, according to the paper. “I lost my breath, honestly.”
