UK PM Theresa May ‘appalled’ by alleged abuses at sleaze dinner

DAVOS: UK Prime Minister Theresa May has condemned the attitudes of men at the top of British business after revelations of a London charity dinner where hostesses were harassed and groped.

“I was frankly appalled when I read the report,” May said in a television interview with Bloomberg’s Editor in Chief John Micklethwait in Davos on Thursday. “I thought that that sort of attitude of the objectification of women was something that was in the past. Sadly, what that event showed is that there is still a lot more work for us to do.”

The Presidents Club, which had raised millions of pounds for charity over several decades, said on Wednesday it was closing itself down after an undercover reporter for the Financial Times described how the 130 hostesses serving at the men-only event had been told to wear skimpy outfits with matching underwear and high heels. At an after-party, many of them were groped, sexually harassed and propositioned, the paper said.


The scandal comes in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations that have rocked Hollywood and rippled outwards. May has lost two members of her own Cabinet to allegations of inappropriate behaviour.

The prime minister said the solution wasn’t more rules. “This is about attitudes,” she said. “It’s about saying that actually women are not objects just to be used by men, actually we are equals, we have our own position, our own abilities.”“I was frankly appalled when I read the report,” May said in a television interview with Bloomberg’s Editor in Chief John Micklethwait in Davos on Thursday.