Where to start with Westminster’s latest scandal, which – without wishing to speculate on spoilers – I suggest you formally label as “developing”? Blowing his own cover in it is William Wragg, MP for Hazel Grove in Greater Manchester, and chair of the public administration and constitutional affairs committee. Aged 36, William is described as a “senior Tory” on the basis of something or other – possibly his predilection for calling for other politicians to resign on moral grounds. Mind you, these days being an MP since 2015 means you’ve seen five prime ministers. If anything, you’re a Tory grandee.
Anyway, here follow the bare bones of what Wragg seems to have got himself mixed up in. Having connected with someone on Grindr, he began an exchange that led, in his own words, to his correspondent getting “compromising things on me”. Instead of going immediately to the police, as far as we know Wragg instead opted to start obliging his tormentor with the numbers of other MPs, Westminster staff and political journalists. These new targets were duly sent photos fairly early on in their own exchanges with their mystery correspondent, and – incredibly and yet entirely credibly – at least two MPs then responded by sending explicit pictures themselves.
On Thursday evening, Wragg issued a mea culpa to the Times. “They had compromising things on me,” he said of what appears to be a spear-phishing attack. “They wouldn’t leave me alone. They would ask for people. I gave them some numbers, not all of them. I told him to stop. He’s manipulated me and now I’ve hurt other people … I’ve hurt people by being weak. I was scared. I’m mortified. I’m so sorry that my weakness has caused other people hurt.”
Well, now. This is not one of those non-apology apologies. Nope, it’s a real self-flagellator, and Wragg is correct to have identified his serious weakness as the central flaw that drove it all. However … with commiserations for what must have been a horrible and frightening experience, an apology just isn’t enough. Wragg was already standing down at the next general election, but surely the next thing he needs to identify is the immediate need for a byelection. On the plus side for Rishi Sunak, losing Hazel Grove now would wipe one off the tally of Tory seats that will be lost in the general election.
Giving out MPs’ phone numbers to a blackmailer/malicious actor in any security climate is obviously – obviously – an awful thing to do; giving them out in the current one has the potential to be a whole lot worse than merely awful. We are not dealing with some sorry case of a confused pensioner made an easy victim by new technology, but a 36-year-old digital native.
Perhaps it would be nice to think that the business of sending pictures has become so routine in this day and age that MPs wouldn’t care even if they were threatened with exposure. And yet, everything about this story suggests they would care very much but did it anyway. It may be an old tale dressed up in modern clothes – but the old tale ended in censure mostly for a reason.
As for the possible perpetrator or perpetrators, we don’t know anything much at all. Leicester police are reported to be investigating malicious communications against an unnamed parliamentarian. Hard to know what’s the more depressing: the rash of MPs now declaring reflexively of such a basic scam “Oh yeah, this’ll be a hostile state actor”; or, if it does turn out to have been a hostile state actor, the fact that this low-rent exercise was all they needed to do to hook in politicians. Master spycraft this was not.
Questions of calibre will be the ones at the forefront of the public mind, as people of a range of generations struggle to understand how Wragg – and the unnamed other MPs – allowed themselves to be so easily sucked in. Of course people who are blackmailed or threatened are victims – but voters are entitled to feel somewhat victimised themselves by the sheer volume of scandals over the past few years.
It should be said that both the Conservatives and Labour have individuals caught up in this current story. But one thing worth wondering about is the various levels of kompromat-gathering that the political parties themselves indulge in, from the fabled dark arts of the whips’ offices to what is euphemistically known as “opposition research”. Does this ever stray into spear-phishing? We don’t really know, the entire area of oppo research being the sort of thing the parties don’t like to talk about.
Well, some of them don’t mind. In an unfortunate coincidence of timing, last weekend the Reform leader, Richard Tice, issued what he called a “special Easter message” for Tory MP Jonathan Gullis (a man one always fears is so stupid he has to have his own phone number leaked to him every day). “Given the multiple bits of embarrassing personal information we have on you,” Tice posted in full public view on X last weekend, “I suggest you pipe down on your attacks on me.” Mm.
Richard Tice is forever going on about “draining the swamp” at the same time as demonstrating himself to be one of the grossest swamp creatures out there. Sad when this is the calibre of the people complaining about the calibre of Westminster MPs. But, as the Wragg affair also proves, here we all are.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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