Resigning was the decent thing to do – we had to take responsibility for Elliott
Reflecting on young activist’s death, Grant Shapps admits party should have been quicker to set up investigation
For Grant Shapps, the realisation that he wanted to resign from the Government came in Africa, in the midst of a sudden illness that almost saw him airlifted home.
As a minister in the Department for International Development, he had been visiting a refugee camp of 50,000 people near the bombed-out city of Malakal, now a ghost town abandoned to the winds in South Sudan’s civil war.
“Inside there was a state of humanity that I have never seen in my life,” he says. “Kids playing in sewers, barefoot; people living literally on top of each other.”
As he toured the camp, Mr Shapps caught an infection that he believes was carried on a gust of air. “By that evening, I was totally flat out. I thought I was going to be airlifted out of Juba where there is no medical [facilities], for a while.”
His incapacitation came at the precise moment that the so-called “Tatler Tory” scandal over alleged bullying and blackmail, and the suspected suicide of a young activist, engulfed the Conservative Party back in London.
Mr Shapps, who appointed the alleged bully, Mark Clarke, to run the Tories’ Road Trip election campaign, had been urged to quit, along with other party bosses.
After receiving treatment, in Nairobi, Mr Shapps called his wife. “I think I am going to have to resign,” he told her. “I don’t feel comfortable about this. I don’t like being part of something that looks like no one really understands and is not prepared to apologise or to take responsibility – any kind of sense of responsibility – and I think I am going to step down.”
A week later, after discussing it further with his wife, he resigned. It was an abrupt end to the ministerial career of a man who had been Conservative Party chairman until the last election and a minister in David Cameron’s government since 2010.
In his first interview since resigning in November, Mr Shapps tells The
Daily Telegraph he has “no regrets” about his decision.
He criticises his party’s slow response to the apparent suicide of Elliott Johnson, whose family, he makes clear, has been let down.
As co-chairman of the Conservatives in 2014, Mr Shapps signed the letter appointing Mr Clarke to run the Road Trip, which involved organising busloads of campaigners to travel the country, campaigning on the streets of key target constituencies.
Mr Clarke, who was nicknamed the “Tatler Tory” after being tipped for political success by the magazine, was thrown out of the party for life after being named as a bully in a letter written by Mr Johnson, the 21-year-old activist who was found dead on railway tracks in September. Mr Clarke denies any wrongdoing.
In the months since Mr Johnson’s death, a succession of allegations has followed, putting senior Tories under pressure.
Mr Shapps says he was right to resign, because “in the end I signed a piece of paper” formally appointing Mr Clarke.
But he was no longer running the party as chairman at the time of the alleged bullying incident in August, or Mr Johnson’s death the following month.
“It didn’t happen under my watch, this is true,” Mr Shapps says. “I just think it was the decent thing to do, just to take some responsibility. I didn’t feel comfortable for the Johnson family that no one appeared to – that I or nobody else should appear to – understand.”
As soon as he had resigned, Mr Shapps spoke to Mr Johnson’s family, “to let them know there was no tin ear to what was going on”.
Does Mr Shapps believe that Lord Feldman, the current party chairman, and an old friend of the Prime Minister, should resign? He was in charge at the time, after all.
“No-one had to resign. I didn’t have to resign and he certainly doesn’t have to resign,” he says. “I am not critical of anyone else’s actions. People have to make their own decisions.”
However, Mr Shapps is critical of the way the party handled the aftermath of Mr Johnson’s death, including the inquiry into the allegations which is being conducted by the law firm Clifford Chance.
Above all, Mr Johnson’s parents have not been treated well, he believes.
“Could the party have been a bit quicker to contact the family? Yeah, absolutely,” he says. “One of the lessons out of it will be that when something like this happens, the best thing to do is to pick up the phone and invite those who are affected in and have a conversation.”
The Johnson family and other key witnesses have said they will not give evidence to the inquiry, with some raising questions over its independence and others fearing they will suffer reprisals if they speak out, although the lawyers have sought to give assurances.
Mr Shapps says he will give evidence, but believes the party should have instigated an independent investigation sooner than it did.
“It is probably not ideal,” he says. “It’s the only investigation that there is that will have any chance of getting the right people to provide information.
“I do think it needs to be as independent as possible and if there are lessons to be learnt it probably includes getting to a fully independent investigation – and faster – under these types of circumstances. The party is not used to dealing with this
‘I don’t like being part of something that looks like no one really understands and is not prepared to apologise’
sort of thing.” Mr Shapps’s career as a minister is over – for now at least. However, the MP for Welwyn Hatfield will not sit on his hands. He is setting up what amounts to a fully staffed think-tank, which will ultimately have 20 researchers, inside Parliament.
His first major project, setting out the case for selling off BT’s Openreach broadband arm to improve internet services for millions of customers, is launched today.
He is also due to set up an initiative to deliver the world’s best housing for veterans in time for the centenary of Lloyd George’s pledge following the First World War of homes “fit for heroes”.
The final of his three new projects is more personal: a campaign to improve mental health services and prevent suicide.
This is in part a response to the tragedy of Elliott Johnson. But Mr Shapps has another reason for wanting to act on this subject.
“This issue of suicide has touched my family directly,” Mr Shapps says. “It is something I have always wanted to do more on.”
In 2008, Jonny Benjamin was talked out of jumping off Waterloo Bridge in London by a passer-by.
His efforts to find the stranger who helped him in order to say thank you became famous and were made into a television documentary - Finding Mike – in 2014. What was not known was that Mr Benjamin is the cousin of Mr Shapps’s wife.
‘One of the lessons will be that when something like this happens, the best thing to do is to pick up the phone and invite in those who are affected’