John Profumo
The scandal John Profumo was involved in had it all. John Profumo, a Tory minister back then, was forced to resign in 1963 after he was caught lying to the House about his affair with former call girl Christine Keeler, who happened to be also involved with a Russian spy.
The outrage that followed led to multiple headlines on ten years of repressed gossip. At the peak of the scandal, leading judge Lord Denning decided to order a cabinet minister to measure his intimate parts, in order to understand whether he was the real “headless man” that was caught having an intimate relationship with the divorced Duchess of Argyll in a photo that made headlines for WEEKS.
John Stonehouse
As he got tired of constantly running from his creditors, hiding his ongoing affair, and concealing his past as a Czech spy, the former Labour minister decided to fake his own death in 1974. He simply disappeared, leaving all of his clothes and passport on a Miami beach.
The papers wrote that he had been eaten by sharks, but as the Commons took a minute of silence for him, Stonehouse was happily sipping a Pina Colada in Hawaii, reading his OWN obituaries. Stonehouse was found later the same year in Australia, being mistaken for Lord Lucan. He came back to his motherland in disgrace and insisted on resuming his own seat as an MP.
Robin Cook
Robin Cook’s resignation in 2003 was nothing but a protest against Tony Blair’s opinion on the Iraq war. Tony Blair decided to send troops to Iraq without the UN’s support. Unlike his other colleague Clare Short, he didn’t brief the press on what he decided. He tried to politely state his case to the House in a rather devastating speech, that only achieved the rare feat of outliving its maker.
Cook’s criticism of Blair’s decision is now seen as incredibly accurate. But looking at his superficial dignity, Cook’s resignation was pretty much a disappointment. He knew very well that if he decided to act at an earlier stage, he might have convinced a few of his colleagues to follow suit, maybe even stop the war from going ahead.
Even so, he secured his place in history, with one of the best speeches that were meant to destroy Blair’s public standing.
