Tories dealt a fresh blow as Menzies quits
LONDON: A Conservative lawmaker facing misconduct allegations said he’ll stand down as a Member of Parliament at the next election, leaving Prime Minister Rishi Sunak struggling to stem the spread of scandals engulfing his party.
Mark Menzies, MP for Fylde in Lancashire, northwest England, was suspended by the Tories last week after the Times newspaper reported that he’d telephoned an elderly local activist at 3am one morning, asking her to give him £5,000 (228,000 baht).
Mr Menzies told the woman he needed the money to pay “bad people” who had locked him in a flat, the newspaper reported. He has said he “disputes” the claims, which are being reviewed by Lancashire police.
“I have decided to resign from the Conservative Party and will not stand at the forthcoming general election,” he said in a statement provided by his party on Sunday. He has exhibited “a pattern of behaviour that falls below the standards expected of MPs”, a Conservative Party spokesperson said.
Mr Menzies becomes the 64th Tory MP to announce that they won’t run again at a general election that has to take place within the next 10 months. That roster has risen steadily in recent months, helping forge a narrative that many of the party’s lawmakers have given up in the face of polls that have consistently shown Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is on course to take power.
The sense of malaise has been compounded by a string of scandals involving predominantly Tory MPs. Earlier this month, William Wragg, a backbencher, resigned the party whip after admitting to sharing his colleagues’ phone numbers with someone on a dating app who it later emerged had been attempting to “honeytrap” MPs.
The Tories are also contesting a special election in Blackpool South on May 2 after former MP Scott Benton quit when he was found to have breached rules governing lawmakers’ conduct on lobbying. That comes after the Tories lost a by-election in Wellingborough in February, which was called when its MP Peter Bone’s political career ended amid bullying and sexual misconduct claims.
Some eight former Tory MPs currently sit as independents in the House of Commons, having lost the party whip over misconduct allegations.
The recent string of events echoes the scandals that dogged the final years of former PM John Major’s tenure in the 90s. At that time, several Tory MPs faced misconduct allegations during a period of decline for the party which had been in power for nearly two decades, before losing to Tony Blair’s Labour in a landslide in the 1997 general election.