Bartholomew's Notes

Here’s an interesting pattern. Back in September 2009, Tim Ireland asked Patrick Mercer to clarify the extent to which his office had worked with Glen Jenvey, part-responsible for last year’s bogus “Terror Target Sugar” story and other dubious tabloid scare stories. Tim noted:

Meanwhile, Mercer is telling people who are asking questions about this that I am an “electronic stalker”.

Move forward to summer 2010, and Mercer is enduring some bad publicity over an extra-marital affair and some money he is alleged to owe his ex-lover. His response? Mail diarist Richard Kay reports:

Tory MP Patrick Mercer tells me he has been issued with a personal alarm system by the police to help him avoid any unwelcome approaches by his thwarted ex-lover, Commons secretary Sarah Coyle.

…While the dust settles, Mercer is off to Afghanistan to research his third novel… ‘I think I’ll be safer in Helmand Province than here,’ he quips.

That would be the same Patrick Mercer MP who has been known to opine about our “our overstretched police and security services”.

Mercer’s affair became public knowledge after Coyle berated him in a corridor at their shared workplace, but there are no reports that she has been acting in a way that would necessitate the ex-soldier running to the police for an alarm system. And if there is a genuine Fatal Attraction-type reason for him to have such a thing, he should surely feel some remorse for his part in reducing someone to such a state and either discuss the matter with due seriousness or – better – not at all. A suggestive quip to a diarist simply leaves the impression that he is playing the media to smear (and damage the career of) a woman he’s already let down.

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