‘It’s John Major’s time all over again. And what happened to us then? We were massacred’
Tory MP Mark Menzies was surprisingly upbeat as he entered the division lobby on Tuesday to vote for rishi Sunak’s flagship legislation to ban smoking for future generations.
only half his party were said to be backing the Bill and so, joked Menzies, the Prime Minister might reward any loyalist who did.
But if he had fantasies of promotion, they proved fleeting. The next day Menzies, the MP for Fylde, Lancashire, was approached by a newspaper with the bombshell allegations that he had misused thousands of pounds of campaign funds.
The 52-year-old had, it is claimed, called a 78-year- old party volunteer at 3.15am one December morning begging for money to pay off ‘bad men’ who were detaining him in a flat against his will.
His initial plea for £5,000 rose to £6,500 – to be paid from a Tory campaign fund. Mr Menzies strongly disputes the allegation. He is also accused of having diverted £14,000 from the same fund to pay for medical bills. He resigned the Whip yesterday, but disputes the claim it had been his suggestion to use campaign funds to pay his medical bills.
yet another sleaze scandal to engulf the Tories then – and yet another to raise serious questions for party bosses.
The leadership was informed in January about allegations of potential fraud against Menzies, including claims that a party worker had paid £6,500 from their own bank account. But no action was taken until the story made it into the media.
yet again there are echoes of the dying days of John Major’s administration as one Tory after another is ousted in seeming disgrace.
The majority of 21 seats won by Major in the 1992 General Election had been completely lost by the time the country went to the polls again in 1997. Now, after a series of scandals and by- elections, the thumping 80-seat majority won by Boris Johnson at the 2019 election has dwindled to 49.
The latest controversy, first reported in The Times, also bears unpleasant parallels with that of William Wragg. A vice chairman of the influential 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, Wragg lost the Whip last week after admitting he had provided the phone numbers of colleagues and researchers to a blackmailer he had never met, but with whom he shared intimate photos on a gay dating website.
Both loners in Parliament, Menzies and Wragg are often seen together around the estate. They share a number of grievances: both are angry and frustrated that they believe they have been overlooked for promotion.
yet in the case of Menzies he has only himself to blame. In 2014 he was on the lowest rung of the ministerial ladder as the parliamentary bag-carrier to the then minister for international development Alan Duncan, the first openly gay Tory MP.
But Menzies quit that year after a Sunday newspaper reported he had paid for sex with rogerio Santos, a teenage Brazilian escort who was in the country illegally. He also claimed the MP had asked him to obtain the Class-B stimulant mephedrone and given him guided tours of Parliament.
Before the story broke, Menzies had never spoken publicly about his sexuality and never mentions his family or private life on his website. He never formally came out but his sexuality has long been an open secret at Westminster.
In 2017, Menzies was in trouble once again, when he was questioned by the police over bizarre claims he had deliberately got a friend’s dog drunk and was then involved in a brawl when challenged over his actions.
The friend claimed he was left with a £500 vet’s bill to ‘sober up’ the unfortunate animal. Menzies, who was not charged by the police, strongly denied any wrongdoing.
Last year, he was accused of ‘ kicking chairs’ and ‘ poking people’ at a Last Night of The Proms concert starring Katherine Jenkins at 18th century country house Lytham Hall in his own Lancashire constituency. He was upset after discovering his party did not have seats reserved in the VIP section.
Even his own supporters conceded he had been ‘drinking too much’ that night, but the MP insisted he never poked anyone intentionally but may have done it by accident, caught up in the patriotic fervour of the evening, brandishing a Union flag.
one senior Tory MP told me: ‘Like Wragg, I’m afraid Mark Menzies was an accident waiting to happen. He has few friends. I’m not aware he’s ever had a partner.’ He shares a home in London with fellow Conservative MP Damien Moore but they are not close.
In Fylde, he lives with his mother, who has Alzheimer’s. His father, a merchant seaman, died a month before he was born.
The senior Tory added: ‘He’s not the first MP to have to contend with an ageing unwell parent and, anyway, that cannot justify his increasingly outlandish behaviour. He’s bitter about the fact he’s never been made a minister and must have worked out by now he never will be.’
Menzies has lost not just the Whip but unpaid Government trade envoy roles – to Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru – which he’s held since 2018 when Theresa May was in No 10.
Another senior source said: ‘This will really hurt him. He tells people they make him feel like a Government minister as the red carpet is rolled out when ever he goes to South America. It’s tragic, because the jobs are just baubles given out by prime ministers to keep backbench nobodies onside.’
Ironically, according to one unnamed MP, Menzies used to regale colleagues with gossip about the bawdy antics of fellow MPs on overseas trips.
Brought up in Ayrshire, he is a Glasgow University graduate. Before politics, he held marketing roles with Asda and M&S.
In the past, his constituency association members have stood loyally by him when controversy has darkened their door. But not this time.
The chairman of Fylde Conservative Association is David Jones, who is also the party’s candidate in the forthcoming Blackpool South by-election on May 2. (The contest was triggered by the resignation of the Tory MP Scott Benton who – in yet another scandal with a whiff of Major-era sleaze about it – was caught in a sting operation last April offering to lobby ministers and table parliamentary questions on behalf of
‘Menzies was accused of poking people’
‘He’s bitter he’s never become a minister’
‘Backbenchers who don’t know how to behave’
gambling investors.) Jones is the chief executive of The Feathers Association, founded in 1934, which works on projects to help children transition from adolescence to adulthood.
Another senior Tory told me: ‘David Jones is a stickler for doing the right thing. Calling a 78-yearold demanding thousands of pounds at 3am and apparently diverting thousands of pounds of party money to his medical records, will be beyond the pale. He will not fight that seat at the next general election.’
In No 10 and at Tory HQ, they are aghast that the party has been thrust into another embarrassing row, particularly when there was evidence the police investigation into Labour deputy leader Angela rayner’s tax arrangements was cutting through with voters.
one senior minister told me: ‘It’s a disaster – and what’s made it worse, we have apparently been sitting on this for three months. What were we thinking of?
‘Every time we take one step forward, like with rayner, we take six back with backbenchers who simply do not know how to behave like the rest of society.
‘This is John Major’s time all over again and do you remember what happened to us then? We were massacred.’