What the Mark Menzies scandal means for the Tories

You’ve got to feel for Rishi Sunak. He spends his days slaving around the clock to shave half a percentage point off inflation, only to find one of his MPs making lurid headlines, again. Today, the Tory boat has been rocked by Mark Menzies, who lost the whip following claims that he had misused campaign funds. He has also been suspended as the government’s trade envoy to Colombia, Chile, Peru and Argentina.

According to the Times, the MP demanded that his constituency manager pay thousands of pounds in cash to ‘bad people’ with whom Menzies had found himself in a flat in December. It was also claimed that this funding was repaid using money from a secret ‘business group’ set up to receive cash from local Tory supporters in Menzies’s constituency of Fylde. The MP says he ‘strongly disputes’ the claims – but a Tory spokesman says the party is taking the allegations ‘seriously’ and that an inquiry has been launched.