Why did Andrew Mitchell have to resign from his post as Conservative chief whip? The explanation has many layers. The facts of the original pomp-and-profanity episode remain obscure. Mitchell disputes the police record. Politicians sometimes lie; so do police officers. On the evidence alone that should make it a stalemate. What appears to have done for Mitchell is the feeling in the parliamentary Conservative party, especially among the 2010 intake of MPs, that his credibility and authority were shot.
It was never going to be easy for the chief whip to impose discipline when his own lack of self-control had been thoroughly advertised for the best part of a month. But why did the original allegations matter so much in the first place? The toxic element was the suggestion of arrogant snobbery, which was only noteworthy largely because it risked reinforcing problems with David Cameron’s own image – aloof, unacquainted with hard graft, surrounded by a gilded elite.
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