What A Little Rascal

The rampant id of the British Conservative Party has popped up for a blather about lap-dancing, largely because one of UKIP's MEPs has defected to the nearly distinguishable Real Conservatives and accused him of being anti-women into the bargain. Apparently he was dragged into a club "unwittingly", which isn't difficult to believe; when one thinks of Nigel Farage, witting is almost certainly not the adjective that springs most readily to mind. He wasn't appalled, in fact he quite liked it, and it doesn't mean he's anti-women, because had he been anti-women his life would have been less complicated than it is now. Well, that certainly settles that.

Four years ago, Farage said that he had been to more than one lap-dancing club, apparently not unwittingly but as a badge of his humanity: other party leaders were "living in this PC world and nobody must admit to being human". He went to one in Strasbourg and had the statesmanlike thought, "Bloody hell, this is really good", and he "might have been to one or two" back in the 1980s, as well. Now it turns out that, no doubt unwittingly, our downmarket Boris Johnson owns a lap-dancing club in the Midlands called Urban Tiger. It all sounds jolly salubrious.