Nigel Hastilow: Snowflake generation goes into meltdown

She told him she wasn’t that kind of a girl. He desisted and they have been friends ever since.

Her experience is not unusual. Men make passes at women.

Often, they are rebuffed. Occasionally, their advances are welcomed. It’s human nature. Which is why the idea that a Cabinet Minister has resigned for putting his hand on a journalist’s leg seems to me to be ridiculous.

Back in 2002, Michael Fallon tried it on with Julia Hartley-Brewer, now a TalkRadio presenter. It didn’t amount to much. She rejected his advances, hasn’t complained about it in public and the two are apparently still friendly.

Ms Hartley-Brewer’s reaction to the new Westminster witch-hunt for sexual predators is all you could hope for from an intelligent adult with a proper sense of proportion.

She said Mr Fallon ‘repeatedly put his hand on my knee’ during a Conservative Party conference dinner. ‘I calmly and politely explained to him that, if he did it again, I would punch him in the face. He withdrew his hand and that was the end of the matter. I have had no issues since with the man in question and do not regard the incident as anything but mildly amusing.’

The incident is so unutterably trivial it would never have become front-page news but for the alleged scandal over MPs behaving badly, mainly with members of the opposite sex.

Admittedly, Mr Fallon says he cannot guarantee this was an isolated incident but even so it is an extraordinary way for a Minister to go.

Another supposed cause for concern is Mark Garnier, the Conservative MP for Wyre Forest and International Trade Minister, who called his secretary ‘sugar t***’.

Anyone who has watched the TV series ‘Gavin and Stacey’ will immediately recognise this as a term of endearment used by Dave Coaches when he’s talking to Nessa. I’ve used the expression myself when talking to the Domestic Goddess, though I am, admittedly, married to her. Even so, it might have been unwise for Mr Garnier to use it when speaking to Commons secretary Caroline Edmondson.

Given her ‘revelations’ – she also bought a couple of sex toys for him after a jovial Christmas lunch – you can’t help thinking their relationship turned sour for other reasons.

Mr Garnier may well be embarrassed by this non-scandal but there’s no reason why he should be forced to resign as a Minister.

Yet he is now subject to an inquiry into whether he’s broken Ministerial rules. Assuming he didn’t claim the cost of the toys on his expenses, the inquiry is a fatuous over-reaction.

That’s one of the difficulties in getting outraged by sexual shenanigans in Westminster, Hollywood or anywhere else for that matter.

They involve two people who may at one time be close, even intimate, before things disintegrate into an explosion of accusations and allegations.

The mealy-mouthed expression ‘inappropriate’ gets trotted out on these occasions because it’s a catch-all expression which is difficult to defend yourself against.

This is not to say, of course, that the more lurid allegations swirling around about some politicians, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and others, are not serious. They are.

There is nothing remotely acceptable about people using their positions of power to coerce younger, more vulnerable young women and men into having sex. That is repugnant and vile, not to say illegal.

But let’s keep a sense of proportion.

Maybe it is a generational issue. Women like Anne Robinson forged their careers in a male-dominated world and could deal with minor harassment without running to the papers or demanding compensation.

They also have a sense of humour, which seems to have deserted today’s ultra-sensitive snowflake generation. They need to toughen up a bit.

It’s extraordinary that many people seem to think it’s the job of Prime Minister Theresa May to enforce some sort of Puritanical regime in Parliament.

Michael Fallon’s wandering hands and Mark Garnier’s unfortunate remark are not issues for the PM. In a rational world, they wouldn’t even be seen as news.

No doubt the party whips, whose job is to keep their MPs in order, have far more salacious information about one or two politicians.

As former Cabinet Minister Stephen Crabb – who resigned after sexting a woman in her 20s – told her in one of his messages, MPs are ‘risk takers in the areas of money, sex, political opportunism’.

But as far as some of the ‘victims’ of some of the more trivial scandals are concerned, they should just stop whingeing and grow up. On the other hand, so should some of our politicians.