Bungler who thought he could be PM
DURING the last general election campaign, Grant Shapps, who was then joint chairman of the party, had a contingency plan if the party lost. He privately believed his key role in Road Trip 2015 – the campaigning operation aimed at winning votes in marginal seats – would catapult him to party leader.
Astonishingly Shapps, who resigned from the Government on Saturday, thought the success of Road Trip 2015 would enable him to tilt at the leadership if David Cameron was forced to resign.
Shapps, having traversed the country at the head of a fleet of battle buses mobilising Tory Party activists, had amassed a vast database of party members and supporters.
One senior Tory said: ‘Grant thought he could use the database to pick up the support of thousands of party volunteers.
‘If we lost the election, Shapps thought the success of Road Trip could land him the top job.’
After the Tory victory, however, he was demoted in the reshuffle to a middle-ranking ministerial role in the international aid department. It was a humiliation for the high-flying Shapps, who is one of the few MPs to hold a pilot’s licence.
His demotion was the price he paid for a series of self-inflicted disasters.
Shapps, 47, was born and brought up in Watford where he went to the local grammar school.
Related to rock royalty, he regularly drops into conversation that Mick Jones of The Clash is his cousin. There is no trace of Mr Jones repaying the compliment, in public at least.
One of the few Cabinet ministers not to go to university, Shapps gained a higher national diploma in business and finance at Manchester Polytechnic. In 1989 he was in a coma for a week after a serious car crash in the US.
The self-made millionaire set up his own printing company at 21 after he returned from the US.
A decade later he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma but recovered after chemotherapy. He married his wife Belinda in 1997 and they have a son and twin daughters.
Shapps became the MP for Welwyn Hatfield in 2005 and astutely seconded David Cameron’s leadership nomination form.
He was swiftly promoted to the housing brief and became housing minister when the Coalition was formed in 2010.
It was after he became joint chairman of the party in 2012 that the telegenic Shapps allowed himself to think he was a potential future Conservative leader. Few of his colleagues shared this conviction.
In the same year that he became chairman it was reported that he had used a pen name Michael Green to run a web marketing company which told people ‘ how to become filthy stinking rich online’ by buying his self-help books, which cost £150.
There were photos of Shapps in 2004 at an internet conference in Las Vegas wearing the name tag of his alter-ego. He also posed in publicity material as a successful businessman in convertible cars – one of which he boasted had a fridge – and a private plane.
At the time he said he had used the pseudonym to separate ‘ business from politics’ but he insisted he had never traded as Green after he became an MP. He threatened to sue a constituent who suggested otherwise.
SHAPPS was embarrassed again when it emerged he had edited his online Wikipedia biography to alter his school exams results and delete the identity of donors to his private office.
Earlier this year he was accused again of doctoring his Wikipedia page and putting unflattering updates on other ministers’ entries, including that of international aid secretary Justine Greening and the Conservative election campaign chief, tough-talking Australian Lynton Crosby. An investigation by Wikipedia, however, discovered the changes on this occasion had nothing to do with Shapps, who was exonerated of any blame.
It was Crosby who was anxious for Shapps to be out on the Road Trip 2015 battle bus because he did not want him anywhere near the campaign HQ in London.
‘Lynton thought Shapps was a bit of an idiot,’ said one source last night.
In February 2015, in a routine radio interview, Shapps again denied using the Michael Green pseudonym after he entered Parliament.
‘Let me get this absolutely clear. I don’t have a second job and never have had a second job while being an MP. End of story.’
Except it wasn’t the end of the story. Only four weeks later Shapps was forced to admit that he had traded as Michael Green after he entered Parliament. The embarrassing admission came only weeks before polling day – and it was the final straw for Mr Cameron.