Will the Tories remove the whip from Will Wragg?

Who else was caught up in the sexting honeytrap? That’s the question Westminster is asking today. It follows last night’s revelation that William Wragg, vice chair of the 1922 committee, was the source responsible for passing on MPs’ phone numbers to a man he met on the gay dating app Grindr. This man then used the numbers to target at least a dozen others.

Among them are believed to be three MPs including a serving minister, four political staffers, a former Tory MP and two political journalists. They were sent unsolicited flirtatious texts from senders calling themselves ‘Charlie’ or ‘Abi’ in a suspected spear-phishing attack. Two of the MPs are reported to have responded by sharing images of themselves.

The range of targets is all the more striking when one recalls the last major sexting scandal in Westminster in 2014. Brooks Newmark was forced to resign as a minister after being caught in a sting operation by the Sunday Mirror.