On 15 September 2025 a man named Paul Ovenden stepped down from his position as a special adviser to Britain's prime minister. In an unrepentant pseudo-apology, he claimed it was ‘chilling’ that a series of messages he had sent eight years ago had caused his early resignation.
These messages were in fact lurid and chauvinistic, and sent to a colleague in the now-governing Labour Party via a work messaging system in 2017. In them, Ovenden recounted hypothetical sexual scenarios aimed at Diane Abbott – a pioneering Black MP. In September, eight years later, he became the first high profile casualty of a new work, The Fraud, by South African investigative researcher Paul Holden. He might not be the last.
