Don’t blame me for bully storm
I knew nothing of sex and drugs claims, says ex-Tory chief Shapps
‘They’re trying to make him a fall guy’
THE growing civil war at the top of the Conservatives took another twist last night when Grant Shapps expressed fury over being made the fall guy in the Tatler Tory scandal.
Friends of the former party chairman say he is angry at being singled out for blame in the Mark Clarke affair by the Conservative high command.
a statement released by the party’s Central Office squarely pointed the finger at Mr Shapps for taking on the controversial election aide.
But last night friends of the international development minister insisted he knew nothing of any claims of ‘bullying’ or ‘sexual aggression’ being levelled against Clarke while he was party chairman. One friend said the only allegation which came across Mr Shapps’s desk was ‘tittle tattle’ of a much less serious nature.
The Clarke affair has plunged the higher echelons of the Tory Party into civil war. Dubbed the Tatler Tory after the society magazine tipped him for a Cabinet post, Clarke, 38, who organised pre-election ‘Road Trips’, stands accused of bullying an activist who later took his own life.
He has also been accused of blackmailing MPs and snorting cocaine at party events. Clarke, who was sacked from the party last Tuesday, denies all the allegations against him.
The party is now chaired by Lord Feldman, a close friend of David Cameron. Insiders say Lord Feldman signed off the money to pay for Clarke’s notorious Road Trips. The fightback by those close to Mr Shapps came as:
Clarke faces a police inquiry over claims that he tried to leak a sex tape of a Tory rival to the media;
He is also accused of having sex with a party aide on a pool table while he was a parliamentary candidate;
He is said to have known about a plot to entrap a Tory foe into being filmed snorting cocaine at a house party;
It emerged that a Tory minister charged taxpayers tens of thousands of pounds to stay at a private members’ club where he would meet his lover.
Mr Shapps was removed from the post of party chairman, which he shared with Lord Feldman, after the election in May. He had already left for a trip to South Sudan on Thursday night when the party released the statement pointing the finger at him.
One friend told the Daily Mail that the minister had been very upset at the ‘enormous tragedy’ of volunteer activist Elliott Johnson taking his life, and that he is ‘thinking of the family every day’.
Clarke’s Road Trips were already happening before they received Central Office support, the friend said, and Mr Shapps had merely agreed to work with Clarke to co-ordinate constituency visits.
‘at no time did anyone write to him about bullying or sexual aggression,’ the friend said. ‘Had anyone done so, they would have been sent up to the party disciplinary procedures. There was only one complaint about Mark Clarke – just tittle tattle, nothing which warranted at all such a reaction. No one ever wrote that Clarke is blackmailing people.’
The friend said the serious complaints about Clarke were received after the election, when Mr Shapps was no longer chairman. ‘People are getting rather annoyed at the attempt to make Grant Shapps into the fall guy,’ the friend said.
Yesterday it emerged that Robert Halfon, a minister without portfolio who attends Cabinet meetings, had claimed thousands of pounds in expenses for staying at a club where he took his lover, alexandra Paterson.
Mr Halfon confessed to the affair following reports that Clarke had planned to film him leaving the East India Club in Central London with Miss Paterson. Clarke denies the blackmail claim.
Mr Halfon, who lives with his partner Vanda Colombo in Harlow, Essex, claimed more than £30,000 in expenses to stay at the club in the four years after he was elected in 2010. His spokesman would only say that Miss Paterson had not stayed overnight at the club.
Meanwhile, India Brummitt, 25, an aide to transport minister Claire Perry, has been forced to quit over claims she had sex with Clarke on a pool table in a South London pub.