Cameron's Worst Week As Former Advisor Now Charged Over Child Porn

A former senior adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron has been charged with possession of indecent images of children. The 63-year-old was arrested by the national crime agency after a complaint from within Number 10 Downing Street itself, according to the BBC.

Patrick Rock has been placed on police bail and is due to appear before Westminster magistrates court on July 3rd. He is accused of being in possession of 59 indecent images of children. Whist these images are only at ‘category C; – the lowest classification of illegal images of children – the allegations against him are believed to have led him to leave Downing Street.

Mr Rock was a well respected political adviser for many years. He was famous for coming up with the phrase “Cows moo, dogs bark, Labour puts up taxes,” used by the Conservative Party in the 1970s. He was widely tipped to be to awarded a seat in the House of Lords under this government for his long-standing service.

As the head of the Number 10 policy unit, Rock had an enormous amount of influence on the inner-circle around the prime minister, a circle that is often seen as extremely tightly knit and hard to permeate, even to the most loyal backbench parliamentarians.

News of Rock’s charging will be a blow to the Prime Minister in what has been one of the hardest weeks of his premiership. On Tuesday, he was forced into a humiliating public apology for employing Andy Coulson as his director of communications. Mr Coulson had resigned as editor of the News of The World over the phone hacking scandal. Cameron “gave him a second chance”, only to be proved wrong by Coulson’s conviction.

As reported on Breitbart London, the leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband accused the prime minister of bringing a criminal into Downing Street. The allegations against Rock can only increase this pressure.

David Cameron had wanted to focus on his opposition to Jean-Claude Juncker’s nomination for Presidency of the European Commission this week, but the prime minister was massively out voted by other heads of government when he tried to oppose Juncker’s nomination.

Whilst the conviction of Coulson and the charging of Rock are clearly embarrassing to the prime minister, they may overshadow his humiliating defeat over the nomination of Jean-Claude Juncker over the presidency of the European Commission. As reported here, Cameron had been desperate to stop the arch-europhile but was massively defeated, leading one German newspaper to describe him as “the loneliest man in Europe”.

With little support from his own backbenches, and his advisers dropping like flies, many Conservatives will wonder whether he isn’t the loneliest man in Westminster as well.