Yet another Tory MP in a sleaze scandal takes us ‘Back to Basics’

MP Mark Menzies has been suspended by the Tories over allegations he used party funds to pay off ‘bad people’ who locked him in a flat, adding to the impression of a rerun of the Nineties sleaze that led to Blair’s Labour landslide, says John Rentoul

John Major’s ‘Back to Basics’ campaign backfired on the Tories (PA)

If there was one word that summed up the fate of John Major’s government as it slid towards record-breaking defeat in the 1997 election, it was “sleaze”.

This allowed Labour and the media to roll together a series of embarrassments about MPs’ private lives with more serious cases of financial wrongdoing into a single miasma of end-of-an-era rottenness. Now it is happening all over again.

Mark Menzies, the MP for Fylde, has been suspended while the Tory party investigates the allegations that he used campaign funds to pay off “bad people” who locked him in a flat. The party has known about the allegations (which Menzies denies) for three months, but only acted when they were reported last night.