Defense Secretary Liam Fox arrives at the Ministry of Defense building on October 13, 2011 in London, England. (Photo: Dan Kitwood / Getty Images)
Liam Fox must have realized he could not outrun his fate. And so on Oct. 14 Britain’s Secretary of State for Defense delivered a letter to 10 Downing Street. “I have repeatedly said that the national interest must always come before personal interest,” he wrote. “I now have to hold myself to my own standard.”
Fox’s resignation may save him from an immediate public shredding but the move is unlikely to call off the dogs. The 50-year-old favorite of the Tory right got into trouble over his friendship with 34-year-old Adam Werritty, his erstwhile flatmate and frequent companion in the U.K. and on foreign trips. Werritty handed out business cards describing himself as Fox’s adviser, attended some key meetings and helped to set up others. Yet Werritty was not employed by the Ministry of Defense or the Conservative party and his modest income from consultancy businesses he founded could not have financed his overseas travel with Fox.
Inevitably the relationship sparked what his Cabinet colleague Employment Minister Chris Grayling labeled “gossip, innuendo and tittle-tattle.” In 2005 Fox had already sought to scotch rumors about his private life. Ahead of the 2005 nuptials at which Werritty would play best man, Fox told an interviewer for the Evening Standard that he was aware of “smears.” He added: “They’d say ‘why are you not married? You must be a playboy or a wild man or gay or whatever.’ Well I’m getting married in December.”
The rumors returned as reporters puzzled over Werritty’s role in his life. On Oct. 12, the mass-market Sun newspaper expressed outrage at having been misled over the details of a burglary at Fox’s London pied-à-terre during the 2010 election campaign. Officials “insisted the embattled Defense Secretary was sleeping there ALONE at the time. But the Sun can reveal a ‘younger man’ was staying overnight at the posh London Bridge apartment,” the stablemate of the defunct News of the World bleated piously. Fox bit back in a statement: “As I told the police at the time, a friend was staying in the guest room. My wife was stranded in Hong Kong due to the ash cloud. For the sake of clarity, it wasn’t Adam Werritty.”
That neat rhyming couplet may have stilled questions about Fox’s sexuality but that was never the point. Conservatives, even on the right of the party, and certainly among its leaders—socially liberal and formally aligned with the Liberal Democrats—would not repudiate someone on that basis. Much more worrisome for the government are issues of propriety and influence. Reporters are hot on the trail of Werritty’s finances. On the morning of Fox’s resignation, the Times (another News Corp. title, and an excellent one) reported that “a corporate intelligence company with a close interest in Sri Lanka, a property investor who lobbies for Israel and a venture capitalist keen on strong ties with Washington helped to fund the jet-set lifestyle of Liam Fox’s close friend.” (The Times story is behind a paywall so here is the BBC report of the story.)
And there’s another potentially troublesome word that rhymes with Werritty and clarity: charity. The charitable organization the Atlantic Bridge Education and Research Scheme, closed last month by its trustees after a damning report by the U.K. Charity Commission, employed Werritty for a time and spent lavishly on networking events on both sides of the Atlantic. These events promoted the staunchly Atlanticist worldview espoused by Fox, but the Charity Commission could not find any evidence of charitable benefit from Atlantic Bridge’s activities.
Investigate journalists are unlikely to give up with the scent of blood in their nostrils, but Westminster’s attention is already shifting. With British troops deployed in Afghanistan and Libya and budget cuts scything through the services, the job of running the Ministry of Defense isn’t easy. Prime Minister David Cameron moved quickly, catapulting the former Secretary of State for Transport Philip Hammond into the role.
Fox, as one might expect, has gone to ground.
Catherine Mayer is London Bureau Chief at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @Catherine_Mayer or on Facebook at Facebook/Amortality-the-Pleasures-and-Perils-of-Living-Agelessly . You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.