How damaging for the Tories is the row about Grant Shapps’ second job? While it is quite easy to write up the Conservative chairman’s business past in a way that makes him sound like a slightly murky character teaching people how to make a ‘ton of cash’, does the latest story, that Shapps was still running his web marketing business when in Parliament, despite his claims to the contrary, really cut through to voters?
The details are as follows: Shapps told LBC three weeks ago that ‘I’ve never had a second job while being an MP, end of story’. But a tape from the summer of 2006 has Michael Green (Shapps) talking about people making a ‘ton of cash’ from his business techniques.
Labour’s John Mann has already dived in to call on Shapps to resign, which is hardly surprising given Mann has a bit of a habit of telling people to resign, which therefore makes him a quite handy interviewee when his party is playing a more cautious game (the official Labour line is that there should be an inquiry).
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