Tory cleared of party grope

A former aide to ex Tory minister Sir Michael Fallon has been cleared of groping a Westminster colleague. Richard Holden, 33, allegedly put his hands up the 24-year-old’s skirt and slipped his fingers between her thighs at a Christmas party at his £1m home in December 2016. Prosecutors claimed he pestered the woman throughout the evening with hugs and called her ‘beautiful’, Southwark Crown Court heard. But a jury of eight men and four women took just half an hour…