Conservative New Essex Man Exposes Civil Society Breakdown

Sexter - New Essex Man Brooks Newmark

"Essex man" as a political figure is an example of a type of median voter and was used to help explain the electoral successes of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, according to Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_man

I wonder what Mr Thatcher would have made of Brooks Newmark, former Minister for Civil Society? My own view is that had the Iron Lady been the leader of the Conservative Party today - an unlikely prospect, I know - the married minister would not have been sexting pictures of his honorable member to lady friends, real and imagined.

Mr Newmark has pleaded psychological problems since he was revealed sexting his "Big Society" in a Sunday Mirror sting last month. A subsequent Sun article revealed a separate affair with a real woman but conducted in a similar manner. The full story is told in The Mail - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2790302/wife-moves-family-home-tory-mp-shamed-texting-explicit-pictures-vows-fight-demons-residential-psychiatric-facility.html

Perhaps not surprisingly the views of real "Essex Man" have been somewhat less than sympathetic, as reflected in the comments on this article in a local newspaper -  http://www.braintreeandwithamtimes.co.uk/news/north_essex_news/11530189.Brooks_Newmark_makes_frank_admission_to__battling_demons__as_a_result_of_stress_and_is_seeking_help/?ref=mc

One of the politer respondents suggests: "So how does he expect to represent his constituents to the best of his ability if he is having residential psychiatric care. Go now & let's have a by election."

This seems to me to be the more sensible solution for Mr Newmark and his family, together with his constituents. Alas, we do not live in an era of political common sense of the kind that Mrs Thatcher would have undoubtedly displayed faced with a disgraced minister, albeit likely to be of a rather different kind: but then the Iron Lady was not faced with UKIP.

Indeed, had Mrs Thatcher been in office now - and unlikely prospect I'll again acknowledge  -  it is almost certainly the case that UKIP would not exist at all or in a much diminished form.

I will also venture that if the country was in the grip of an Iron Lady, albeit one reconstructed for the present age, we would not be in the midst of a civil society breakdown which is all too apparent to ordinary people; even if posh ones living in the wealthier parts of London and their hinterlands (second homes in the country etc) are blissfully unaware of this, possibly because they are too busy taking pictures of their genitals for posterity.