Tories engulfed in new storm with MP being probed over party funds
A CABINET minister was forced today to defend the Conservatives after it was reported that the party failed to act for more than three months over a series of bizarre allegations surrounding Mark Menzies MP. The member for Fylde in Lancashire disputes the allegations reported by The Times but the party said he had agreed to have the whip withdrawn, meaning that he will now sit in the Commons as an independent.
Mr Menzies became the eighth Tory MP to be suspended over various allegations including of sexual misconduct. He denies any wrongdoing.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps denied that suspect behaviour was rampant in his party’s ranks after 14 years of Conservative rule.
He told LBC: “There are people I’m afraid in every walk of life who either won’t do the right thing or sometimes are troubled individually, perhaps with mental health and other things which leads them to do things which they shouldn’t have done. Those eight aren’t all sitting in Parliament.”
Mr Shapps denied any cover-up in the party’s handling of the latest imbroglio surrounding Mr Menzies, who quit as a ministerial aide a decade ago following allegations reported by the Sunday Mirror about his behaviour made by a Brazilian male escort.
The MP, who is one of Rishi Sunak’s trade envoys, is being investigated by the party following claims that he misused campaign funds. He also faces allegations that he made a latenight call to a 78-year-old aide asking for help because he had been locked up by “bad people” demanding thousands of pounds for his release. Asked why the whip had not been removed earlier if the party was aware of the allegations as early as January, Mr Shapps told Times Radio: “My understanding is that there was some further information yesterday — I don’t know precisely what that was — that led to a conversation in which the whip was removed and this will be properly investigated.”
A party spokesman said: “The Conservative Party is investigating allegations made regarding a Member of Parliament. This process is rightfully confidential. The party takes all allegations seriously and will always investigate any matters put to them.”
In a statement to The Times, Mr Menzies said: “I strongly dispute the allegations put to me. I have fully complied with all the rules for declarations. As there is an investigation ongoing I will not be commenting further.”
Senior backbencher William Wragg has voluntarily relinquished the Tory whip after his admission that he shared colleagues’ personal phone numbers with a suspected sexting scammer.
According to the newspaper, £14,000 given by donors for use on Tory campaign activities was transferred to Mr Menzies’ personal bank accounts and used for private medical expenses.
The MP is also said to have called his former campaign manager at 3.15am one morning in December, claiming he was locked in a flat and needed £5,000 as a matter of “life and death”. The sum, which rose to £6,500, was eventually paid by his office manager from her personal account and reimbursed from funds raised from donors, it is alleged.
THERE is no getting away from Karl Marx’s gag about history beginning as tragedy and ending as farce. When the only thing we can think about when it comes to the Government is a mesmerising sex scandal, we really are in John Major 1997 territory.
As scandals go, this is a good one, featuring financial impropriety as well as, um, bad judgment. Last December, Mark Menzies, an MP no one has ever heard of, allegedly phoned an elderly local Tory party volunteer at 3.15am to tell her that he needed £5,000 “as a matter of life and death” because he was being locked up in a flat against his will by “bad people”. The sum, risen to £6,500, was paid by his constituency office manager by cashing in her ISA. Another paid hundreds of pounds of his savings to pick up Mr Menzies, it is claimed; most of us would happily have consigned him to his fate. Menzies denies any wrongdoing.
It gets better. It turns out that Mr Menzies, who previously resigned as a ministerial aide over claims he paid for a male escort, repaid his benefactors out of Tory campaign funds which he had earlier used for private health care.
The tragedy in all this is that it features some of those individuals, the grassroots constituency workers, many of them elderly, on whom the party system depends; people who do the campaigning on behalf of the likes of Mr Menzies.
The affair, coming as it does so soon after the William Wragg honeytrap business — blackmailed, he handed over the personal contact details of his colleagues — is just the latest element of the coming catastrophe. As with John Major, when the electorate is too busy laughing to be indignant about the big stuff, you’re doomed.
With Major, we didn’t know the half of it; if his affair with Edwina Currie had emerged at the time, the metaphor of a landslide would hardly have sufficed for the result.
No one thinks Rishi Sunak has sinned in that fashion, but he lacks even the affection that there was for Major, with his engagingly garrulous brother, Terry, and the Private Eye persona of the PM tucking his shirt in his underpants.
Successful governments shrug off scandals — though Major’s would have taken Mr Menzies’s one far more seriously; with doomed governments, it’s just one more thing to add to the charge sheet. A poll published today suggests that the Tories now lag behind Labour on defence, tax, immigration and ...
Brexit. If you made a list of all the things Tory voters didn’t vote for, but got, over the last 14 years, it’s hard to know where you’d stop. Whatever you think of Sunak banning future fag sales to anyone 14 or under (my 17-year-old daughter says she’d emigrate if it applied to her), it’s not a policy Winston Churchill would have warmed to. And that was the centrepiece of the PM’s conference speech.
There’s lots of small telling stuff: things a previous Conservative government would have recognised as just not-Conservative. We came within a whisker, for instance, of losing ticket offices at stations with ministers standing by; it was only a heroic campaign by the disabled that stopped it. And what about a postage stamp costing over a pound last year? And this year’s reveal from the Post Office — leave aside Mr Bates — that it may or may not deliver second class post every two or three days? Ministers just didn’t care.
Leave aside the succession of almost heroically rubbish prime minsters since David Cameron. Previously Lord North held the unchallenged position of the worst prime minister ever — and he could blame the American War of Independence. But after the Tories gave us
When the only thing we can think with the Government is a mesmerising sex scandal, we are in 1997 territory
Theresa May, “Partygate” Boris, Liz Truss and now Sunak, Lord North’s baton has passed on.
How about the actual charge sheet, the big things? The Tories lost it on sound money with Cameron’s quantitative easing (remember?). And that’s before you get to immigration. There’s only one figure you need to remember: the 740,000 net who came to Britain in 2022, that is, nearly three quarters of a million in one year.
The big difference, of course, between this impending Tory implosion — at the last count there were 63 Tories who aren’t standing at the next election, but give it time — and 1997 is of course that Sir Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair, one of the great political communicators. No one would say as much about Sir Keir. Some 45 per cent of respondents in the poll mentioned earlier do not want him as PM. This election will be won by default.
Voters can take what fun they can from Tory scandals. Because the politics on offer right now is a matter of the least worst option rather than being spoilt for choice. Not a happy scenario, is it? • Melanie McDonagh is an Evening Standard columnist