24. Minister’s Inability to Keep It in His Pants Leads to Government’s Collapse
In 1961, John Profumo, Secretary of State for War and a rising star in Britain’s Conservative Party, met and had a brief fling with an aspiring model, 19-year-old Christine Keeler. In of itself, that was no big deal – then as now, politicians having affairs were a dime a dozen.
What turned it into a scandal with far-reaching consequences was the coverup: when Profumo was asked about it in the spring of 1963, he told the House of Commons that there had been “no impropriety whatever“. Those words came back to bite him – and the British government – big time.