Tatler Tory, his mistress and revealing email leak

AN email showing how ‘Tatler Tory’ Mark Clarke and his mistress ran the Conservative Party battlebus campaign at the centre of an election expenses row was leaked last night.

In the email, Clarke tells MPs his battlebus will not affect their election expenses because it ‘is accounted for out of central campaign spend’.

The party was fined a record £70,000 last week after an Electoral Commission watchdog inquiry found that it had failed to record correctly a total of £275,000 spent during the 2015 general election and at three by-elections.

It included a five-figure hotel bill for activists and officials in the successful Tory campaign to defeat Nigel Farage in South Thanet and more than £100,000 on battlebuses that toured target seats as polling day approached in May 2015.

One of the by-elections was at Rochester in 2014, during which Theresa May was filmed campaigning alongside Clarke. She slapped him on the back and praised his work for the Conservatives at a rally. Married Clarke’s mistress, Tory election aide India Brummitt, was in the audience.

Clarke ran Conservative HQ’s battlebus campaign which saw coach-loads of activists sent to target seats. He also ran his own similar RoadTrip campaign which was at the centre of sexual harassment, bullying, drug taking and drunken behaviour claims.

Shortly after the 2015 election, Clarke, once tipped for the Cabinet by Tatler magazine, was banned for life by the Tories after the suicide of young activist Elliott Johnson, who claimed he was bullied.