‘I could barely speak. I felt like a ghost inside my own skin’: the month that shook the CBI

theguardian.com:

Staff at the Confederation of British Industry had been working around the clock for weeks and were in need of a break.

It was July 2019 and parliament was deadlocked. The Conservative party was trying to secure a Brexit deal that its backbenchers could accept for Northern Ireland, as well as the rest of the UK. Theresa May’s premiership was hanging by a thread, with Boris Johnson plotting to replace her with a pledge to “get Brexit done”. Amid this battle between warring Tory factions, businesses and lobby groups were desperately trying to get their voices heard.

Still, some CBI staff thrived on the long hours and gruelling negotiations: they had joined the UK’s premier business lobby group for the adrenaline rush of late nights crossing swords with senior figures in Whitehall and Westminster.

So the CBI’s summer staff party was a perfect chance to unwind, with more than 100 colleagues invited to the bash. It was a balmy evening and the sun had started to break through the clouds as the boat party on the River Thames got under way, accompanied by a soundtrack of traffic and fuelled by cheap prosecco.

But the events that it is claimed unfolded on that boat, including an alleged rape and attempted sexual assault, are among a string of allegations that have thrown the CBI into its deepest crisis since it was formed by royal charter in 1965. Together they form a catalogue of claims by more than a dozen women that suggest a toxic culture of misogyny and unchecked misconduct at Britain’s most influential business lobbying outfit.

Since the Guardian first revealed a month ago that the CBI’s director general, Tony Danker, who joined the organisation in November 2020, had stepped aside amid separate allegations of misconduct, a