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 be too much to say that the Profumo scandal was the necessary prelude to the new Toryism, based on meritocracy, which would eventually emerge under Margaret Thatcher". "The Economist" suggested that the Profumo affair had effected a fundamental and permanent change in relations between politicians and press. Davenport-Hines posits a longer-term consequence of the affair—the gradual ending of traditional notions of deference: "Authority, however disinterested, well-qualified and experienced, was [after June 1963] increasingly greeted with suspicion rather than trust". After expressing his "deep remorse" to the prime minister, to his constituents and to the Conservative Party, Profumo disappeared from public