IN ALL the Boris Johnson-inspired nonsense about Keir Starmer not prosecuting Jimmy Savile, one important fact seems to have been missed in what have otherwise been excellent Morning Star articles.

Ws should never forget that paedophile Savile was an enthusiastic Tory and a close friend of some very top Tory ministers. He enjoyed a particularly warm and close friendship with prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Like Johnson, Thatcher loved her parties although she never asked guests to bring their own booze. Savile was an honoured guest at no less than 11 of her new year parties at Chequers as well as many other celebrations where he mixed with the high and mighty of the Tory government.

One Tory minister, Edwina Currie — at the time in charge of mental health policy — actually authorised Savile’s “access all areas” key to everywhere in the Broadmoor top-security mental hospital, here he regularly watched female patients undress and bathe and abused and assaulted many other patients.

His access included 24-hour access to the mortuary where he assaulted corpses. Currie arranged for Savile to have a flat and his own parking space at Broadmoor.

Currie would later demonstrate the Tory attitude to home and family when she confessed a four-year affair with John Major — another Tory prime minister — between 1984 and 1988, while both were married to other people.  

Savile also enjoyed predatory activities at 28 other hospitals courtesy of Currie and other Tory ministers. These included 60 victims from ages five to 75 in Leeds General Infirmary where Savile worked as a volunteer porter. His victims were mainly teenagers and included men, women, boys and girls.

When Savile was 82, two years before his death, he raped a woman in his camper van at Digby mental hospital in Exeter and sexually assaulted other patients on a ward at Moss Side in Liverpool. At St Catherine’s in Birkenhead he jumped into bed with a 14-year-old girl and touched her inappropriately.

Currie told a later inquiry Savile’s appointment seemed like a good idea to her as he promised to confront the Prison Officer Association (POA) about their working practices. She thought his “blackmail” approach to the prison officers’ trade union was “a pretty classy piece of operation.” She wrote of Savile in a press release: “He is an amazing man and has my full confidence.”

Meanwhile Savile could always find time to campaign for the Conservative Party he loved and admired. At elections and at other times Savile always enthusiastically campaigned for the Tories. Perhaps that’s why none of his high and mighty Tory mates reported suspicions of his paedophilia to the police or offered to become witnesses in any prosecution.