Shooting the Fox

Andrew Werrity is a curiously Dickensian name: perhaps the honest son of a poor family who learns that he has been cheated of his inheritance from a wealthy uncle.

He is indeed cast in a drama, however it is a modern day one. He is the friend of the Defence Secretary Liam Fox, who has been so much in the news. Werrity has been on something like a third of Fox's foreign trips and has appeared in meetings with him with various foreign dignitaries even though he is not a civil servant nor a special adviser.

It is not enough, now, for Mr.Fox to say that there has been a witch hunt against him. It is quite right and proper that the press investigate what could be a security leak: the Defence Secretary doesn't just discuss the weather with foreign governments and Mr Werrity has no security clearance. Nor is it sufficient for Mr. Fox to apologise for blurring the distinction between public and private life: he is the defence secretary.

There were whispers before, and these have grown since it was reported that at the time of a burglary to his flat, there was another man staying there, that Mr. Fox might be having a homosexual relationship. Nothing wrong with that if it is in the public domain but not if he is trying to cover it up (the Tory Party first said he was alone in the flat). At first we heard that Fox and Werrity met at university, then we are told that there is 16 years' difference in their ages and when they met Fox was on a speaking engagement at the university.

But then again what sort of man makes his homosexual lover best man at his wedding (to a woman)? It is all very curious.

Fox either needs to resign and maintain the privacy an ordinary individual is entitled to, or he needs to make a full explanation, covering, but not limited to, the security implications. Nothing in between, one or the other. He owes it to his wife and family, he owes it to Mr Werrity, and above all he owes it to his country.