Cronus was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titans according to Greek Mythology.
He was best known for overthrowing his father in a power struggle, before his own son Zeus did the same thing to him.
You need these facts in your life, because unless you went to private school like most of the UK cabinet, you probably weren’t drilled in the classics at school.
The other reason to know who Cronus was is because it’s the name Gavin Williamson gave his pet tarantula spider, which lived in his office during the team he served as Chief Whip.
We know that Gavin, now Sir Gavin, knighted by Boris Johnson in March, is an animal lover.
Largely because he has used the excuse of being very upset at the vets, where he had gone with one of his dogs, when he sent abusive text messages to Wendy Morton MP.
She was the Chief Whip during Liz Truss’s brief tenure as Prime Minister and held the pen over the list of important politicians who were invited to the Queen’s funeral.
Gavin Williamson’s name was not on it.
Gavin Williamson ‘bullying’ headlines proved too damaging
Now I love dogs too but I’m not particularly keen on spiders, although I’ve had more exposure to them than most.
I mention this only to suggest that keeping a tarantula in your office is less likely to be linked to your love of arachnids, and more likely to be linked to your desire to intimidate people and to show how tough you are.
Gavin Williamson has had to resign this week following a second round of bullying allegations.
A civil servant says he was told by him to slit his own throat or jump out of a window when he was at the Ministry of Defence.
Astonishingly Gavin Williamson has resigned, not because of his conduct but because the coverage of his conduct was distracting.
He is a close ally of Rishi Sunak and appears to have concluded that all of these negative headlines are a poor build-up for a new leadership which promised a steadfast focus on the cost of living crisis.
Next week is a big week for the new Prime Minister as he finally details his autumn statement and the circa £50 billion worth of cuts we’re all going to have to endure.
He has resigned to do Rishi a favour, not because he’s sorry.
Williamson is gone, but the problem remains
We know Gavin WIlliamson is not sorry because his resignation statement and associated commentary states that he does not consider telling someone to jump out a window as “bullying.”
I suspect to his mind bullying involves a physical action, like flushing a head down the toilet or being pushed up against a wall by the bike sheds.
'A group of whips so disliked him, they had a conversation about whether they could come in early one morning, release his pet tarantula and stamp it to death'@nicholaswatt on the animosity towards Gavin Williamson from some whips in his former officehttps://t.co/P0zxS1Voyd pic.twitter.com/6uqQeLOg5t
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) November 8, 2022
His behaviour is clearly deplorable. But it would be a mistake to assume he is an outlier or somehow markedly different from the system itself.
He is not the only whip in the history of politics to keep a black book of gossip about his parliamentary grouping, and to let it be known that he knows lots about the personal details of MPs’ lives.
Tactics like this are used all the time, in parliaments across the country and around the globe.
So yes Gavin Williamson should lose his job for the way he has behaved.
But once again we are in danger of thinking we have fixed the problem and can move on without doing the hard work of challenging and changing the political culture that underpins it all.
Conversation