It’s not often in life that you are faced with a genuine moral dilemma, but when I heard that Daniel Korski was the favourite in the contest to be the next Tory candidate for London Mayor, I didn’t know what to do.
My dilemma was this: ten years ago Korski had, during a business meeting at No 10 Downing Street, groped me by putting a hand on my breast.
There aren’t many things I remember clearly from ten years ago, but this incident is one of them.
I had been summoned to Downing Street during the Cameron administration to talk to an official about an idea for a TV programme.
I had met Korski at a party and he had followed up with an email. As I waited to see him, I drank in the aroma of Downing Street, which took me back to the boys’ public school I attended – a sweaty combination of testosterone and socks.
DAISY GOODWIN: It’s not often in life that you are faced with a genuine moral dilemma, but when I heard that Daniel Korski was the favourite in the contest to be the next Tory candidate for London Mayor, I didn’t know what to do
Korski, who was quite a few years younger than me, showed me into a room dominated by a portrait of Mrs Thatcher then, to my surprise, remarked that my sunglasses made me look like a Bond Girl and put his feet on my chair when we sat down at the table.
I tried to turn the conversation to turning exports into unmissable TV.
At the end of the meeting we stood up and Korski, to my astonishment, put his hand on my breast. I looked at the hand and then in my most affronted voice said: ‘Are you actually touching my breast?’
He dropped his hand and laughed nervously. I swept out in what can only be called high dudgeon.
Should I call attention to this man’s behaviour from ten years ago, or should I do nothing? After all, what he had done to me in The Thatcher Drawing Room had not ruined my life.
At the time I had been as shocked and amazed as anyone, but it wasn’t the end of the world. When I was a young woman in the 1980s, I had learnt to deal with unwanted advances from male co-workers in the media by laughing them off.
It was much easier to evade the hand on the leg or the bum, or pretend that it hadn’t happened, than to make a fuss.
I didn’t want to be the girl who couldn’t take a joke. I hasten to add that nothing really terrible happened to me prior to Korski’s bizarre act, but in the television industry of the 80s and 90s, there was a lot of behaviour that would nowadays be called ‘inappropriate’.
But it’s only since the horrifying revelations about Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, and the growth of the MeToo movement, that I have come to understand that ‘laughing off’ this kind of behaviour is tantamount to condoning it. I have two grown-up daughters and I would be horrified if any man laid a hand on them in a work situation.
DAISY GOODWIN: My dilemma was this: ten years ago Korski had, during a business meeting at No 10 Downing Street, groped me by putting a hand on my breast
But if women like me don’t come forward then this kind of thing will keep on happening. I owe it to my daughters and their generation to speak out.
And not just them, I owe it to all the decent men who would never dream of molesting a woman in the workplace.
I don’t think masculinity is toxic, but some men are – to use an old fashioned word – ‘rotters’.
And I don’t think these men should be selected for positions of power when there are many honourable men who don’t think that power is an excuse to put their hands wherever they want. Yet I hesitated before naming Korski.
One of my friends who knew the story was very gloomy about what would happen. ‘Of course I will stick by you, but there is bound to be blowback.’
Blowback is another way of saying ‘victim blaming’. When I first wrote about the event for the Radio Times in 2017, I didn’t mention Korski by name.
But I was still surprised by the reaction. I was on the front page of every newspaper looking, for want of a better word, busty. Perhaps that was the only picture they could find, but at the time I felt they were suggesting that my figure suggested I was asking for it.
Although things have changed a lot since 2017, there is still a tendency to ridicule and blame women who speak out about male sexual misdemeanours.
Because so often any sexual incident is unwitnessed, it comes down to a question of ‘she said, he said’, and very often the woman is not believed.
Think of the Brett Kavanaugh case, where professor Christine Blasey Ford, a credible witness, testified to being sexually assaulted by the future Supreme Court Judge, at considerable personal cost, but he was nominated anyway.
No wonder so many women think it is easier to say nothing, as they know that their veracity will be doubted.
I have a friend who is a judge who says it is very rare for juries to return a guilty rape verdict if the man and woman know each other. So why, given the potential fallout, am I speaking out now?
Part of Korski’s campaign is that he wants to make London safer for women. This strikes me as the ultimate irony.
It makes me queasy to think the man who groped me under a portrait of Mrs Thatcher should be someone who can be relied on to protect the opposite sex.
I am not saying that every politician has to be a saint, but I wouldn’t put an arsonist in charge of the Fire Brigade.
What concerns me – and is another reason I am writing this – is I suspect other people in positions of power may know Korski is capable of this kind of behaviour and yet have still decided to back him. It may be that having named Korski, he is still selected as the Tory candidate for Mayor next month.
After all, the Hollywood Confidential tape where Donald Trump boasted about ‘grabbing women by the pussy’ did not stop him being elected President. But I think voters should know who they are voting for.
It may be that, as with Trump, the people who are supporting Korski know about his behaviour and have decided it doesn’t matter. But I think that men who don’t know how to control themselves should think twice about running for public office.
It’s also possible Korski has never done anything so foolish again, and if that is the case then I would be the first to accept that people can change and even grow up.
But if his behaviour was part of a pattern, then I hope other women will be brave enough to come forward. Speaking out isn’t easy, my friends keep saying how brave I am being. But I don’t feel brave – I feel rather embarrassed, but I also feel that I can’t look my daughters in the face unless I do this.
Women would rather be known for their achievements than their misfortunes, but in the end I think we can’t be afraid of doing the right thing.
We shouldn’t have to warn younger women to be careful, not to be alone with such-and-such a man, or circulate secret WhatsApp spreadsheets.
Women and men of every age should be treated with respect in the workplace, and the people who don’t understand what that means should not be running for office.
A spokesman for Korski said: ‘In the strongest possible terms, Dan categorically denies any allegation of inappropriate behaviour whatsoever.’
