While UK opposition parties are by no means exempt from the front-page splashes of sleaze and scandal that pervade the British media, it is the Conservative Party that have been so frequently beset and besieged by allegations of ‘Tory Sleaze’ – a wretched, mottled beast that all too often rears its head, looming large over the public’s perception of life in Westminster.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, battling against low approval ratings, is contending with huge challenges to his authority with a likely no confidence vote in his leadership if the local elections on May 2nd are to turn out as badly as the polls suggest. He spent last week under pressure to justify his flagship Rwanda Bill, which is expected to take a half a billion pound toll on the UK public purse, despite not a single immigrant yet being relocated to Rwanda.

It’s in this context that the game of headline wack-a-mole to which the Prime Minister Rishi must descend has become a farce that distracts from essential matters of government, and it’s a farce that spells decline. This month, fresh allegations of sleaze were triggered by Mark Menzies MP’s alleged misuse of campaign funds to pay off ‘bad people’ who had locked him in a flat, in what he called ‘a matter of life and death’. How is it that our top elected politicians, servants of their constituents and of the realm, can become embroiled in such as improbable scandals as these?

Why so much sleaze?

In this parliament, 18 Conservatives have resigned or had the whip withdrawn from them – in other words, have left the parliamentary party. Of course, MPs from other parties have lost the whip, and the Labour Party continues to endure allegations of antisemitism and investigations into the tax affairs of its deputy leader, Angela Rayner. But the number of Tories implicated in sleaze is the largest of any party.

It is perhaps natural for the ruling party to be under the closest media surveillance, and uncovering political corruption and scandal is something the UK media, coming in the top quintile of the 2023 World Press Freedom Index, is able to do incredibly well. What seems unnatural however, is both the number and peculiarity of unfortunate incidents that beset the Conservative Party.

Three weeks ago, William Wragg MP had to resign the Tory whip after being implicated in a sexting scam, the widely reported ‘Honeytrap scandal’, in which he was threatened with blackmail and suggested to have shared his colleagues’ data on Grindr. How low our sense of public duty has fallen, when instead of honouring the Nolan principles of public life – Selflessness, Integrity, Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty and Leadership – certain MPs are fiddling with campaign money and blurring the lines of public and private by tying themselves in knots on dating apps. 

One senior government source suggests the pressure of life in parliament and exorbitant levels of public scrutiny are pushing some MPs towards more extreme behaviour. He said MPs are an odd bunch and it takes a certain type of person to go into politics, which might explain their higher risk appetite. If identification as an odd bunch belies the normalisation of higher risk behaviour and an unreckoned with decline in mental health among MPs, then we have a serious problem with our politics.

A way forward? 

It is a shame that the majority of hardworking Conservative MPs are having their party’s reputation dragged through the dust by a few irresponsible colleagues. But during a cost of living crisis, with creaking public services, and the country facing some of its biggest challenges at home and abroad, the Conservatives simply cannot afford to make more mistakes.

In the public eye, the Conservative Party has become almost synonymous with ‘sleaze’, and trust in the government is plumbing new depths – https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49179-political-tracker-roundup-april-2024. When the general election comes in the second half of this year, the polls are predicting a Labour majority. Labour voters will be hoping that Sir Keir Starmer will reform the standards of public decency and clean away the sleaze that has become so grimily entrenched in the nooks and crannies of Westminster.