James Cleverly under fire for joke about drinking spike

James Cleverly is facing calls to resign after joking about increasing his wife’s booze – just hours after announcing new plans to crack down on booze increases.

The Home Secretary told female guests at a Downing Street reception that “a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night” was “not really illegal, if it was just a little bit”. He also said that the secret to a long marriage is to ensure that your partner is “someone who is always slightly sedated, so that she can never realize that there are better men out there”, according to the Sunday Mirror.

Cleverly has since apologized for the “ironic joke”, made at a Downing Street reception, saying he made it “in what was always understood as a private conversation”. However, the Fawcett Society has questioned how the public can “trust him to take violence against women and girls seriously again”.

“It is sickening that James Cleverly, the senior minister responsible for women’s safety, thinks something as terrifying as drugging women is laughable,” the gender equality charity said. “No wonder women don’t feel safe. We know that ‘banter’ is the excuse under which misogyny can thrive.”

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Anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller wrote on . against women. Palliative care doctor and writer Rachel Clarke added: “The actual Home Secretary, making a joke about date rape. Mind-bogglingly awful.”

Co-founder of the campaign group Reclaim These Streets, Jamie Klingler, shared an article about a case in France about a man accused of drugging his wife every night, saying: “The @JamesCleverly joke isn’t funny because men kill their wives But yeah, complain that the jokes were meant in private, while pretending that you think it’s important that women are drugged and raped.’

Broadcaster and writer Jemma Forte added: “Dumber than anything. Shows the caliber of politician in this current government. Whatever your taste in politics, you know you won’t find a Blair, a Brown, a Ken Clarke or a Vince Cable etc. making jokes in bad taste.”

Given that Cleverly was appointed after Suella Braverman was sacked over her controversial comments on the Metropolitan Police’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests, Tory party members hoped the new Home Secretary would bring greater stability.

This is now in doubt, according to columnist and author James Ball, who said: ‘The whole purpose of James Cleverly’s move to the Home Office was to provide him with a safe pair of hands. Given that, it’s truly astonishing how many stupid and self-inflicted news cycles he managed to generate in the six weeks he was on the job.”

A physician and advocate for victims of rape and addiction who goes by X’s name “Dr. Mike’, added: ‘The Home Secretary making a joke about date rape and spiking proves he’s the wrong person for the job. be at the end of their career. Women deserve better from the man in charge of the police force.”

James Cleverly made an ‘ironic joke’

Allies of Cleverly said his comments were made in a private setting, but he acknowledges they were inappropriate. His spokesman said: “In what was always understood to be a private conversation, James, the Home Secretary tackling surges, made what was clearly intended as a tongue-in-cheek joke – for which he apologises.”

Cleverly did not remember the exact wording he had used as it was a private “off-the-record” event that took place on December 18, according to the BBC. The Prime Minister, who is believed to have attended the reception, is yet to comment on Cleverly’s comments.

Senior Labor figures have attacked Cleverly, with shadow domestic violence minister Alex Davies-Jones saying: “’It was a joke’ is the lamest excuse in the book and no one believes it. If the Home Secretary is serious about tackling the spike in violence against women and girls, this will require a complete culture change. The ‘banter’ needs to stop and start at the top.”

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper suggested the comments showed Cleverly “doesn’t understand how serious” violence against women and girls is. She added that victims “will wonder if they can trust him to take this despicable crime seriously.”

What is the government doing to tackle the peaks?

The Home Office has unveiled a package of measures to tackle surges, including research into self-test kits, more training for door staff and better education for young people. She has also pledged to step up police response during key weeks of the year – an approach that has proven successful in tackling other crimes, such as knife crime.

Meanwhile, the Government will also seek to amend the Criminal Justice Bill to make it clear “beyond any doubt” that spiking is illegal. Separate guidance, set out in law, will “provide a clear, unambiguous definition of what spiking is”.

Practical measures on the ground include training hundreds more door staff to spot potential perpetrators and provide signals that customers are being targeted, and research into jab test kits so that bars, clubs and police can detect in real time whether there is someone in his drink. . An online surge tool will be offered to all police forces in Britain to make it easier for people to make anonymous reports, while new surge guidelines will provide the public with resources to learn more about surges and how to report them.

The Council of National Police Chiefs has said it is very difficult to get a clear picture of the widespread spikes because it is difficult to collect reliable data. According to a November 2021 YouGov poll, 11% of women and 6% of men said they had been enriched. A third of women and one in five men are infected or know someone who is.