A Conservative MP’s senior aide has been acquitted of raping and sexually assaulting a woman inside the Houses of Parliament.

Sam Armstrong, who was suspended as chief of staff to the South Thanet MP, Craig Mackinlay, was cleared by the jury of seven women and five men at Southwark crown court of two counts of rape, one count of sexual assault by penetration and one count of sexual assault.

He had been accused of taking advantage of the woman in Mackinlay’s office after a night of drinking but maintained that the sex was consensual.

Armstrong’s name surfaced during the so-called Tatler Tory bullying scandal in late 2015, when it emerged he had been banned from the Conservative party conference due to his associations with figures embroiled in allegations of bullying.



The 24-year-old told the court he and the woman had ended up alone in the office in the early hours of 14 October 2016. She had asked him to play jazz music and sat with him on a sofa, before jumping up and demanding that he dance with her, he said.

He said they had danced in the office and begun kissing, before having sex. Armstrong told the court there was “joshing around” between the pair during sex.

Outside court, Armstrong said his life had been “turned upside down” and alluded to the controversy surrounding disclosure failures by the police and prosecutors that has emerged this month.

“My whole life has been turned upside down. For a year I have not slept or eaten, and I was innocent,” he said. “Were it not for the fact that crucial evidence was disclosed to my defence team just eight working days before trial, there could well have been yet another miscarriage of justice in this case.”

Armstrong and his lawyers would not say to which evidence he was referring.

Mackinlay, who gave evidence as a prosecution witness, had previously made clear that the office was not to be used for social purposes out of hours when he was not there.

Mackinlay told the court he had a “father and son” relationship with Armstrong, whom he described as being “more dedicated than other staff” and “very driven on politics”.

After the verdict, the South Thanet MP said on Twitter he was “pleased” for his former employee.

I am very pleased for Sam, a young man whose life has been destroyed over the past 14 months. Debate now needed over anonymity of those accused, especially in a week where actions of the authorities in such cases have been found wanting. https://t.co/tpNlYTCIzM — Craig Mackinlay MP (@cmackinlay) December 21, 2017

Both Armstrong and Mackinlay were referring to two sexual offence cases that collapsed when evidence pertinent to the defence case was disclosed at a late date.

Armstrong attended a grammar school and joined Mackinlay’s permanent staff after graduating with a politics and history degree from Nottingham University.



Armstrong was a close ally of Mark Clarke, the so-called Tatler Tory and failed parliamentary candidate who was named as a bully in a suicide note left by the young Tory activist Elliott Johnson. Clarke has always vehemently denied any allegations of wrongdoing.

Johnson’s death sparked a bullying scandal that engulfed the party and led to an overhaul of the complaints system for party volunteers.



The most notorious incident associated with Armstrong was an allegation that, on the orders of Clarke, he waited in foliage outside the East India Club in London to take photos of the former Conservative deputy chairman Robert Halfon emerging with his lover in mid-2015. Armstrong strongly denied the allegation. Shortly after the alleged incident was reported, Halfon admitted to having an affair with a female youth activist.

On the evening of 13 October, Armstrong and the complainant drank in a bar on the parliamentary estate, watched Big Ben chime on its terrace and sipped wine in the leader’s office in the Lords before going to Mackinlay’s office in the Norman Shaw North building.

Prosecutors alleged Armstrong “abused his position” once they were alone, sexually assaulting her and raping her twice.

The woman was captured on CCTV running through the corridors of Westminster until she found a cleaner, who said she was “shaking and crying”, holding on to him until police arrived.

Armstrong said he felt like he had been “punched in the stomach” when he was arrested early on the morning of 14 October at his flat in Clapham, south London. He was described by his barrister Sarah Forshaw QC as “earnest, a little geeky, awkward”.

Forshaw suggested the woman had panicked and made the allegations after becoming distressed as she tried to leave the Palace of Westminster at around 2am – and then was caught in the lie.

The court heard that she had given the story to a journalist at the Sun later that day.

Armstrong told jurors he regretted having sex in his boss’s office and said: “It was foolish. It was an act of enormous foolishness and as a consequence I have had the worst year of my life.”

He said the allegations had cost him his “dream job” adding that he would “never, ever, ever” get his career back.

“While what I did is foolish, the point is I’m innocent of this and for whatever reason somebody is trying to make a horrible, horrible, horrible allegation,” he said. “The point is on this allegation, somebody is trying to send me to prison for a very long time for something I didn’t do.”