MP targeted in Westminster honeytrap resigns party whip

William Wragg, who admitted sharing fellow MPs’ personal phone numbers with someone on a dating app, has “voluntarily” given up the Conservative whip.

He will now sit as an independent MP in the House of Commons.

Mr Wragg has also given up his roles on the 1922 backbench committee and the Public Administration Committee.

Last week, he told The Times he had been targeted by a suspected Westminster honeytrap plot.

The Hazel Grove MP said he had been chatting with someone on an app who subsequently asked him for the numbers of others.

“They had compromising things on me. They wouldn’t leave me alone…. I gave them some numbers, not all of them.”

He told the newspaper: “I’m so sorry my weakness has caused other people hurt.”

Up to 20 people in political circles are reported to have received unsolicited messages, which have included explicit photos.

The Metropolitan Police has confirmed it is investigating reports of the messages being sent to MPs.

Leicestershire Police has said the force is “investigating a report of malicious communications”.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Mr Wragg had “rightly apologised” for his actions.

Asked why he had not removed the Tory whip from the MP himself, the prime minister told LBC: “The important thing here is that we let the police investigations run their course.”

Since last week, when the website Politico first reported that people in Westminster had been receiving suspicious messages from senders named Charlie and Abi, 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.

Another former MP told the BBC he had received flirtatious messages and an explicit picture from someone who claimed to remember them from their time working in Parliament.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Conservative whips – who are in charge of party discipline – said: “Following Will Wragg’s decision to step back from his roles on the Public Administration and 1922 committees, he has also notified the chief whip that he is voluntarily relinquishing the Conservative whip.”

The 36-year-old’s departure from the Conservative parliamentary party is quite a 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.

The party whips have been clear that his decision to resign from his role was voluntary, although the party chair Richard Holden has already said it is “the right thing to have done”.

Mr Holden told Sky News: “It’s quite clear his career in public life is at an end.”

While many MPs have expressed sympathy for their colleague – Chancellor Jeremy Hunt praised his “courageous” apology – 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 upset some of those close to Boris Johnson by being one of the first to call for him to go in the aftermath of the partygate revelations.

He had also publicly demanded that Liz Truss step down as 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”.

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 – Labour’s Pat McFadden said it was “another indictment of Rishi Sunak’s weakness”.

For now, Mr Wragg will sit as an independent. His friends don’t think he has any intention of resigning as an MP, after announcing many months ago his plan to leave politics at the next election.

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.