Another day, another high-profile acquittal that leaves you wondering how on earth it ever reached a courtroom. Patrick Spencer, the MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, walked out of Southwark Crown Court a free man yesterday after a jury took seven hours and six minutes to decide he was not guilty of two counts of sexual assault.
The allegations dated back to two incidents at the Groucho Club in London on 12 August 2023, long before Spencer entered Parliament. One woman said she froze. The other said she was mortified. Fair enough emotions, yet the jury clearly saw more to the story than those raw feelings. Spencer told the court he had been drunk but not out of control, could not recall the specific moments, denied pestering either woman for drinks or asking intrusive questions, insisted he had not touched one complainant's breasts, and maintained that any contact with the other was purely accidental.
Our shared nightmare is now over, Spencer said after the verdict. He had always maintained his innocence, and today's not guilty verdict draws a very long and challenging period in his life to a close. You can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from anyone who's watched these sorts of cases spiral into reputational meat grinders before the facts have a chance to breathe.
The presumption of innocence isn't optional
Spencer was elected as a Conservative in July 2024. The party whip was yanked away in 2025 once charges landed, forcing him to sit as an Independent. Yesterday that whip was restored. The sequence feels depressingly familiar: allegation surfaces, career pauses, media hums with innuendo, then a jury looks at the actual evidence and says, not proven. The Metropolitan Police even admitted their initial investigation fell below expected standards, apologised to the two women, and reiterated their focus on tackling violence against women and girls. Noble priorities, yet one wonders whether the rush to charge after a botched first pass helped anyone.
It's the sort of saga that makes you picture the modern political landscape as a particularly clumsy game of whack-a-mole. Public figure pops up, cultural pressure hammer comes down, courtroom eventually reveals the mole was never the villain drawn on the side of the box. The jury, eight men and four women, sat through the full trial. They examined the CCTV that Spencer disputed as proof of assaults. They listened to everything. And they returned not guilty verdicts.
In an age where unproven claims against conservative politicians seem to travel faster than light, this outcome feels like a small, stubborn stand for due process. No one is suggesting complainants should be dismissed out of hand. But treating every accusation as a conviction with extra steps does violence to the very principle that protects us all when the roles reverse. Spencer sobbed with relief and hugged his wife Anna afterwards. His father, the billionaire Conservative donor Michael Spencer, presumably exhaled too. The nightmare, as the MP put it, is over.
