- Prime Minister Theresa May's chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, believes deputy PM Damian Green should resign over allegations that he looked at pornography while at work.
- A second "senior figure" told The Times: "It's time for the whisky and the revolver."
- But some Tory MPs believe Green is being unfairly targeted by police officers who collected non-criminal information years ago, and preserved it after they were ordered to destroy it.
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'It’s time for the whisky and the revolver': Theresa May's advisers split over whether she should fire her deputy over porn allegations
May's chief of staff Gavin Barwell is among those who believe Green should resign.
LONDON — Some of Prime Minister Theresa May's top aides believe she should fire deputy prime minister Damian Green over allegations that police found porn on his work computer in 2008.
May's chief of staff Gavin Barwell is among those who believe Green should resign, The Times reports. Green has also been accused of unprofessionally propositioning a young Tory activist, Kate Malby, in a pub, and sending her suggestive text messages.
A second "senior figure" told The Times: “It’s time for the whisky and the revolver.”
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Green was cleared in the 2008 investigation over government leaks, and police ordered the evidence they had collected to be destroyed. However, The Times reports separately today that police kept a copy of the hard drive. The images were "deleted" but the drive was not wiped or written over — meaning that the files could be retrieved if needed.
Some Conservative MPs believe that two police officers involved — detective Neil Lewis and former Met officer Bob Quick — have behaved unethically in revealing non-criminal evidence police collected years ago, after it was supposed to be have been destroyed. They regard that as a political attempt by former officers to embarrass politicians they do not like. From that perspective, Green is simply being targeted unfairly, those MPs believe.
Green has personal supporters in the cabinet, too. May and Green have known each other since they were students at Oxford in the 1970s. And Brexit minister David Davis has said he will resign if Green is forced out.
But others fear that even if Sue Gray (the head of propriety and ethics in the Cabinet Office) clears Green in her investigation of the Maltby allegations some other allegation might surface, once again dragging May's government through the mud. “What happens if someone else comes forward?” one aide told The Times:
A cabinet source said: “Barwell wants him to fall on his sword. There’s a danger with saving him because he’s so close to her and it will look like she’s looking after her mate’s job. There’s also a danger that they keep him and then you have to get rid of him two weeks’ later if something else comes out. You get covered in shit twice.”
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A second senior figure said: “It’s time for the whisky and the revolver.”
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