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.

Labour is naturally keen to take full advantage of a fresh set of Tory woes. Anneliese Dodds, the party’s chair, has already fired off a letter this morning to her Tory counterpart. She asks Richard Holden why no action has been taken in relation to claims of potential fraud ‘despite the allegations reportedly being known about since January’. Dodds also wants to know whether all donations have been properly declared with the Electoral Commission.

For the Tories, it’s an unwelcome return to being on the back foot after a week of goading Labour over the Angela Rayner investigation. Coming in the wake of the Will Wragg ‘honeytrap’ affair, it is difficult to argue with Dodds’s assessment that ‘stagnation, scandal and sleaze’ is engulfing elements of Sunak’s party. Even some Conservatives will admit to the obvious – but unhelpful – comparisons with the tail-end of John Major’s government.

The next step will be whether the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards considers there is sufficient evidence to open an investigation into the claims about Menzies. This could then lead to a suspension from parliament which, if it were longer than ten days, would trigger the recall process and a potential by-election.

But an investigation could take months: the one into Chris Pincher began in October 2022 but did not conclude until last July, triggering the Tamworth by-election which was held in October. Given where we are in the parliamentary calendar, that means a by-election looks unlikely to take place this side of a general election – unless Menzies chooses to quit of his own volition.