Profumo affair Party was marked by the scandal, which may have contributed to its defeat by the Labour Party in the 1964 general election. When the Profumo–Keeler affair was first revealed, public interest was heightened by reports that Keeler may have been simultaneously involved with Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché, thereby creating a possible security risk. Keeler knew both Profumo and Ivanov through her friendship with Stephen Ward, an osteopath and socialite who had taken her under his wing. The exposure of the affair generated rumours of other scandals, and drew official attention to the activities of Ward, who was
Profumo affair to reveal their sources for sensational and uncorroborated stories about Vassall's private life. The imprisonment severely damaged relations between the press and the Macmillan government; the "New Statesman"s columnist Paul Johnson warned: "[A]ny Tory minister or MP ... who gets involved in a scandal during the next year or so must expect—I regret to say—the full treatment". Brigadier John, 5th Baron Profumo (1915–2006), was born in 1915, of Italian descent. His family, on his father's side, were minor Italian aristocracy, and were awarded a low-ranking Italian peerage by the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1843. 'Jack' Profumo inherited this peerage, the