LONDON — The scandal lasted just over a week. It began with questions about why 33-year-old businessman Adam Werrity had traveled extensively abroad with his longtime friend, British Defense Minister Liam Fox, signaling an unusually close relationship with the Cabinet minister despite the fact that he held no official government position.
And it grew as a torrent of allegations emerged about the array of individuals and companies that contributed to Werrity’s mosaic of security-related businesses and foundations, which might have supported his first-class travel and lavish lifestyle and suggested he was brokering access to a senior minister for wealthy donors.
On Friday, no longer able to ward off the damaging flak, Fox resigned, acknowledging he had allowed his personal and professional lives to overlap.
Prime Minister David Cameron named Philip Hammond, who had been transport secretary, as Fox’s replacement.
“I mistakenly allowed the distinction between my personal interest and my government activities to become blurred,” Fox wrote in Friday’s resignation letter to Cameron. “The consequences of this have become clearer in recent days. I am very sorry for this.”
Fox had resisted calls to quit over his relationship with Werrity, the best man at his wedding, admitting there was “the impression of wrongdoing” but arguing that any decision on his fate should await the outcome of a government inquiry.
He insisted that Werrity had not profited from their friendship, nor sold access to his office. And an internal Defense Ministry inquiry concluded that Werrity’s relationship with Fox had not resulted in any security breach.
But questions about the sources of Werrity’s funding continued to emerge.
Fox’s political collapse deprives the Conservative party’s right wing of its most prominent standard-bearer. An intellectual descendant of Margaret Thatcher, Fox was leery of too close ties to Europe and an advocate for maintaining strong partnerships with the United States and Israel.
He competed — and lost — against Cameron in the party’s 2005 race. But when the Conservatives won power by forming a coalition with the left-leaning Liberal Democrats in 2010, Fox’s presence in Cabinet was seen as an important counterweight for the party’s right wing.
That internal political calculation was seen as one reason the prime minister stood by his old rival this week, despite the scathing headlines.
