The Daily Mail – August 30, 2010
Wife ‘traumatised’ after top Tory MP Crispin Blunt admits: ‘I’m gay’
By Barbara Davies and Tim Shipman
The wife of prisons minister Crispin Blunt is ‘completely traumatised’ by his admission that he is gay. The couple have separated after nearly 20 years of marriage following Mr Blunt’s shock confession on Friday that he has been living a lie. Friends say Victoria Blunt – a former banker, and the daughter of a wealthy American – felt betrayed because she had sacrificed her career and used her fortune to support her husband’s political life. ‘She is completely traumatised,’ said a source. ‘She has devoted most of her married life to playing the politician’s wife and it was all built on a lie. Another source added: ‘She gave up everything for him. She is the perfect MP’s wife and would attend every fete and garden party when Crispin was at the Commons. ‘She did it all for free. She was never employed by him.’
Mr Blunt, MP for Reigate in Surrey since 1997, went to such lengths to conceal his homosexuality that he risked claims of hypocrisy. His election literature and profile on the Conservative party website sold him to voters as a husband and father of two. And in a Parliamentary debate, he once claimed homosexuality is ‘not equivalent to heterosexuality’. To cries of ‘shame’ from Labour MPs, Mr Blunt, 50, said: ‘It is also clear that there is a much greater strand of homosexuality than of heterosexuality which depends for its gratification on the exploitation of youth.’
Friends have revealed Mr Blunt took the decision to come clean about his sexuality after Liberal Democrat Treasury minister David Laws was forced to resign earlier this year when it emerged that he had been paying taxpayers money in rent to his gay lover. They say Mr Blunt realised that his continuing ‘deceit’ to his family and constituents over his sexuality was more damaging than the admission he was gay. ‘The Laws episode was decisive,’ says an acquaintance of Mr Blunt, ‘because Crispin saw that the fire storm which descended was nothing to do with Laws’ homosexuality and everything to do with his deceit.’