Conservative MP William Wragg has voluntarily given up the Conservative whip after admitting to sharing fellow MPs’ personal phone numbers with a user on a dating app. He will now sit as an independent MP in the House of Commons. Mr Wragg has also resigned from his roles on the 1922 backbench committee and the Public Administration Committee. Last week, he spoke to The Times about being targeted by a honeytrap plot, saying he had been chatting with someone on the app who subsequently asked him for the numbers of others. Up to 20 people in political circles are reported to have received unsolicited messages, including explicit photos.
Leicestershire Police has said the force is “investigating a report of malicious communications,” while the Metropolitan Police has confirmed it is investigating reports of the messages being sent to MPs. Since last week, when people in Westminster had been receiving suspicious messages, some politicians and political journalists have been coming forward with their own experiences. Bosworth MP Luke Evans said he had been a “victim of cyber-flashing” after being sent an image of a naked woman. Meanwhile, another former MP received flirtatious messages and an explicit picture from someone who claimed to remember them from their time working in Parliament.
While many MPs have expressed sympathy for their colleague, some MPs had privately expressed surprise that Mr Wragg has not lost the Conservative whip, and at least one Tory MP had contacted the whips’ office to say he should be suspended from the parliamentary party. There was also a danger of his continued presence in the parliamentary party becoming a factional issue. Mr Wragg’s decision to resign the whip may take some heat off the prime minister, although critics may continue to question why Rishi Sunak did not take stronger action himself. For now, Mr Wragg will sit as an independent.
The 36-year-old’s departure from the Conservative parliamentary party is quite the downfall for a man who until Monday night was the vice-chair of the 1922 committee, which brings together all backbench MPs in the party. He had also publicly demanded that Liz Truss step down as the prime minister. One of her allies, Jacob Rees-Mogg, this week questioned the sympathy he has received, saying Mr Wragg had “always been willing to throw stones when people have fallen below his high standards.” Andrea Jenkyns, a supporter of Mr Johnson, said Mr Wragg had been “an idiot for compromising security”. It is a career as an MP that was always going to draw to a close this year, but has not ended in the way he would have hoped
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