SHOCKING LITANY OF CLAIMS AGAINST PM’S AIDE
TIPPED for a Cabinet post by society bible Tatler, Mark Clarke stood for election for the Conservatives in 2010 but lost to Labour candidate Sadiq Khan.
Since then, he has been one of the party’s leading grassroots activists and helped organise its Road Trip campaign tours in the past two years.
But last week he was kicked out of the Conservative Party and banned for life following a torrent of allegations of bullying, blackmail and sleaze. Here, the Mail details those allegations:
BULLYING AND A YOUNG ACTIVIST’S DEATH
CLARKE was initially suspended from the Tories earlier this year after he was accused of bullying a young activist who went on to kill himself.
He was said to have taken issue with Elliott Johnson, an activist with the Right-wing campaign group Conservative Way Forward, and then threatened him when he complained to Conservative campaign headquarters (CCHQ).
During one alleged confrontation in a Westminster bar on august 12 – witnessed by dozens of people – Clarke was said to have ‘pinned’ Mr Johnson, 21, to a chair, grabbed his face and ordered him not to betray him.
In a recording of a second pub meeting, Clarke appears to try to blackmail Mr Johnson by threatening to expose a police caution from his student days. Days later, on September 15, Mr Johnson took his own life. He left a suicide note making various allegations.
after Mr Johnson’s death, it emerged that CCHQ had received more than 25 complaints of bullying against Clarke.
Clarke has denied bullying Mr Johnson, saying: ‘I strongly refute any suggestion of bullying or harassment. I am not making any further comment about this matter. The family have asked for privacy and I respect both their wishes and the coroner’s process.’
SEX-TAPE BLACKMAIL OF A TORY PARTY RIVAL
CLaRKE admitted trying to leak a lewd video of a Conservative activist engaging in a sex act.
The victim said he was duped into performing a sex act on the internet, and then threatened with exposure if he did not pay £2,500. When he refused, it was posted on Facebook and copied by Clarke who then approached a media outlet with the footage.
Clarke claimed he only did so in an attempt to expose the scandal, saying he too had been targeted by the blackmailers. He said he was trying protect others from similar attacks.
The sex video blackmail is alleged to have taken place in September.
Clarke is accused of making a copy of the film in which one of his Tory foes was duped into performing a sex act on the internet. The victim has told police and the Tory Party that he believes Clarke is responsible for the film.
He had been duped into performing a sex act by a blonde who contacted him via Facebook. The victim now believes the woman never existed. He thinks Clarke copied the film by holding a smart phone to film the sex video.
In a separate allegation, Clarke was accused of knowing about a plot to entrap a young Tory woman into being filmed taking cocaine at a party after she was plied with alcohol. He has said: ‘I have given no films of any drug-taking to any media outlets.’
CONFESSION OF THE ADULTEROUS MINISTER
MINISTER Rob Halfon confessed to an affair with a Tory activist after Clarke
allegedly threatened to blackmail them both. Mr Halfon, 46, came clean last week about his six-month relationship with Alexandra Paterson, the chairman of a Conservative youth movement, after learning Clarke allegedly planned to film the pair leaving a London club where they met for trysts. Clarke ‘strongly refutes’ the allegations.
Mr Halfon ended the affair in May, the same month in which his lover claims she was tipped off about the alleged blackmail plot. Miss Paterson, 30, declined to comment.
SEXUAL MISCONDUCT ON CAMPAIGN TRAIL
CLARKE has been accused of preying on women during his notorious Road Trip campaigns. Three female activists have come forward to claim Clarke attacked and threatened them. Two of the women claimed he bragged about using alcohol to make women sleep with him, calling it his IIP technique: Isolate, Inebriate and Penetrate.
The first woman, aged 20, said he shoved her into a doorway, grabbed her by the neck and said he wanted to sleep with her.
The second woman said Clarke mentally abused her after they had a sexual relationship when she was in her 20s and he helped her obtain a high-profile role.
The third woman has told Conservative chiefs that Clarke sexually molested her in a bathroom at a Tory event when she was 17. Clarke declined to comment on the allegations.
‘WANNABE CELEB AND SLEAZY GANGMASTER’
LAST week, a whistleblower claimed Clarke encouraged young women and men on the Road Trip campaign to try to seduce four MPs with a view to his blackmailing them.
The woman accused Clarke of behaving like a ‘peacock’ at Road Trip events, saying he was ‘something between a wannabe celebrity and a sleazy gangmaster’. She said he was compiling ‘dirt’ on four Tory MPs to use as leverage.
The woman also claimed that he sexually assaulted her, and threatened her when she complained.
She also accused him of snorting cocaine with women at party youth events; using the promise of career advancement to ‘pimp out’ young female and male activists to MPs, making unwanted sexual advances on Tory activists, and bullying and threatening to destroy those who spoke out against him. She also claimed his activities were well known by many at the top of the party for up to seven years. Clarke said the allegations were all lies.
SMEAR CAMPAIGN AGAINST HOSPITAL
IN 2010, when campaigning as the Conservative Party candidate in Tooting, South London, Clarke was accused of running a smear campaign against his local hospital using ‘misleading death figures’.
Hospital bosses said he made ‘inaccurate’ and ‘unfounded’ claims about a ‘terrible scandal of 116 preventable deaths from superbugs’ at St George’s.
In fact, the hospital said, infection was the cause of death in only a third of these cases.