We’ll never be able to stamp out sleaze at Westminster – isn’t that depressing?

We cannot feasibly get rid of every single male politician – there are no background checks thorough enough to ensure that everyone who comes into parliament is safe and decent, writes Marie Le Conte

We ran towards the ball and we gave it our all. Of course, the ball was taken away from us, again (UK Parliament/AFP/Getty)

I’m exhausted. Are you exhausted? Honestly, I’m knackered. I am looking at my desk and I am wondering what it would feel like to hit my forehead against the cold hard wood, once, twice, enough times to knock myself out.

Earlier this year we went through a second round of MeToo – Me2? – in Westminster and we asked: have things changed since 2017? And the answer was, for the most part: not really, no. Things have not really changed. I wrote about it at the time, for this very newspaper. You can read it if you want. I’m not going through it again.

Anyway, we looked around and found that things were still broadly the same and broadly bad, and we channelled our inner Charlie Brown and decided to kick the ball again. We knew that the last time we’d tried to kick the ball it’d been taken away from us and we’d looked silly, but that didn’t matter.

Things had not really changed but maybe, if we believed it enough, got angry enough, made enough noise, they could change this time. Maybe this time we could make the male politicians who misbehave understand that they could not get away with it. We ran towards the ball and we gave it our all. Of course, the ball was taken away from us, again.

Last week, some anonymous Conservative MPs identified some new culprits for the Honiton and Tiverton by-election their party lost. Did Boris Johnson, the now comically unpopular leader and prime minister, have something to do with it? Of course not. Was Neil Parish, perhaps, as the MP who started it all by watching pornography in the Commons chamber, at fault? Oh, don’t be silly. No, the women who spoke out are to blame, obviously.

“Parish shouldn’t have resigned. He should have just gone away with his wife for a few weeks and then come back to the job. I don’t know why the girls had to speak out like that”, one told the i newspaper. The girls! You can be an elected lawmaker and still, if you do not know your place, you will be patronised into oblivion.

Still, this was, comparatively, the most dignified quote of the lot. According to another Conservative MP, the female MPs who spoke out about Parish – in a closed meeting – should “feel like a turd in the swimming pool”. It is lucky that these women cannot read and do not have access to national newspapers; one can only imagine how they would feel otherwise.

Parish himself, meanwhile, admitted on LBC yesterday that it’d been “immoral” for him to watch pornography in his place of work, but was keen to add that he’d been sitting in the corner of the chamber, not “in the middle”. Cheer up ladies; chivalry isn’t dead. It’s just resting.

Though the Conservatives have been the main offenders this time round, it is my delight to remind you that things are no better elsewhere. Lest we forget, SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford is currently being urged to quit over claims that he bullied a party staffer. The young man’s crime? To have been on the receiving end of alleged sexual harassment by former chief whip Patrick Grady, and deciding to complain about it.

Elsewhere, a recording of Blackford telling a group of MPs to rally around Grady by “giving him as much support as possible” was leaked earlier this month. Aren’t you exhausted?

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This is usually the point at which a silver lining makes itself known, or a note of practical optimism begins to shine through. I have to be honest with you, though: for once, I have nothing. We cannot feasibly get rid of every single male politician; there are no background checks thorough enough to ensure that everyone who comes into parliament is safe and decent.

Ultimately, politics is about parties – it is about teams that win and lose, and that stick together even when they shouldn’t. Until we make enough people understand that their party does not matter as much as doing the right thing, nothing will change. Until we make enough of them realise that winning cannot be the only prism through which to view every event, nothing will change.

Can this happen? I have no idea. I wish I could tell you that I do but quite frankly, I don’t. It would be nice if it did – I just don’t have it in me to try and kick the ball again.