Even a recent history of Tory iniquity turns the stomach

“BAD PEOPLE” allegedly imprisoned Conservative MP Mark Menzies in a flat last December, and it took £6,500 from a Tory activist — money apparently repaid from a secretive campaign fund — to secure his release.

Menzies denies doing anything wrong. He is to leave the Commons at the next election.

We do not know how “bad” the people in the Fylde flat were. But they would fit right in at their purported prisoner’s workplace.

Just consider the record of those elected as Conservative MPs in 2019. Among those to have lost the whip and/or left Parliament since we find:

Scott Benton, caught on camera offering to lobby ministers for payment. Crispin Blunt, arrested on suspicion of rape and possession of controlled substances, allegations he denies. Peter Bone, suspended for bullying and sexually harassing staff, which he denied.

Andrew Bridgen, who compared the Covid vaccine to the Holocaust. Imran Ahmad Khan, convicted for child sexual assault. Neil Parish, caught watching pornography while in the Commons chamber — apparently searching for a website about tractors.

Owen Patterson, found to have breached parliamentary rules on paid advocacy. Chris Pincher, sanctioned for sexual misconduct in a Pall Mall club. Rob Roberts, who made unwanted sexual advances to a staff member.

Bob Stewart, found to have racially abused a Bahraini human rights activist. David Warburton allegedly sexually harassed three women, allegations which he denied and were eventually withdrawn, as well as allegedly failing to declare donations from a billionaire and to have concealed property interests. William Wragg gave colleagues’ contact details to a honeytrap sting operation.

All this before one arrives at Boris Johnson, forced to leave the Commons after being found guilty of lying to the House and, it should be added, the country.

So Menzies is no aberration. And let it not be thought that this formidable list of former Tory MPs means the party’s benches are now cleaned up.

Far from it. They are still home to Suella Braverman, sacked for breaching the ministerial code of conduct and then reinstated within a week; Andrea Jenkyns who, while an education minister, made obscene hand gestures in public; and Robert Jenrick, found to have breached the law when waving through a planning application from a Tory donor.

And this is to name bit a few. The Tory Party stinks from top to bottom. The only wonder is that the “bad people” in the flat in Fylde did not offer to pay someone to take their “captive” away when they discovered he was a Conservative MP.

Faltering falsehoods flounder

Gideon Falter has been found out. The chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, a body so partisan in its purposes that even Margaret Hodge MP broke all connection with it, did not accidentally stumble across the pro-Palestine march which the police stopped him from entering.

He apparently attended with bodyguards and a cameraman, intent on staging an incident to further his declared aim of banning any demonstrations of solidarity with the people of Gaza.

Full transcripts of his encounter with the police show the latter acting reasonably in trying to avert a contrived confrontation.

And even in Falter’s suspect telling, there is no evidence of him being menaced by marchers. Indeed, the idea that they are hotbeds of anti-semitism is a fiction, as the thousands of Jewish people attending can attest.

Two lessons emerge from this: one, mainstream journalism is bankrupt — it retails any fraudulent claim uninspected, provided they conform to their political agenda.

Second, the Establishment’s drive to halt the pro-Palestine movement by one means or another continues unabated. We must march in ever greater numbers on Saturday to show we will not be cowed.