Sleaze, campaign funds and a 3am phonecall: Another Westminster scandal
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
**Since publication, Savanta revised the polling data included in this episode to show the Labour candidate on a two point lead. More information here**
A 3am call, and a Tory MP talking about a life or death situation in which he was being held captive in a flat.
Amazingly, that wasn't even the weirdest bit. As the day, and the story, unfolded, there were allegations of campaign money donated by Conservative supporters being used to pay for the MP's medical bills and more.
Mark Menzies , Fylde MP, is just - remarkably - the latest in a long line of MPs - both Tory and Labour - who have lost the whip this parliament.
What's going on? Has scandal become easier to detect? Harder to hide? Or is this what the end of every reign starts to feel like?
We talk to the Times journalist who broke the story, Billy Kenber, and to the man whose job at the heart of Downing Street was interfacing between the PM and his MPs' each time scandal broke, Craig Oliver.
Later, whats going on in the West Midlands race? We have exclusive Savanta polling.
Editor: Tom Hughes
Senior Producer: Gabriel Radus
Producers: Laura FitzPatrick
Social Media Editor: Georgia Foxwell
Video Production: Rory Symon & Arvind Badewal
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The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.4 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:13.0 | Maylis, can we roll play something? |
| 0:15.0 | Go on. |
| 0:15.7 | It's quarter past three in the morning. |
| 0:17.7 | Right. |
| 0:18.2 | I ring you and I say, look, it's life or death. I need money now. I'm being held |
| 0:24.6 | by some bad people. Well, you're going to laugh. I'm going to say, let's talk about it in the morning, |
| 0:30.8 | love. What didn't you get about it's life or death? No, the truth is, if you told me it was life or death, |
| 0:36.2 | I would call the police, |
| 0:38.1 | I would wait my husband, I would try and work out what on earth was going on in your life |
| 0:43.2 | that put it at risk. In this case, they were about to talk about today, the woman who picked up |
| 0:49.6 | the phone refused and went back to sleep. And they did talk about it in the morning. This is just the |
| 0:57.3 | latest scandal that has seen one more Conservative MP lose the whip. And the details are |
| 1:06.0 | extraordinary. Mark Menz's political career may be over, but there is something about this Parliament. |
| 1:14.5 | Maybe it's something in the Westminster water. But has there ever been so much scandal about one group of MPs? |
| 1:23.4 | Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:27.8 | The Newsagents. The Newsagents. |
| 1:30.1 | It's John. |
| 1:31.3 | It's Emily. |
| 1:32.0 | And I feel like we have already told you the story. |
| 1:35.2 | But here it is, in all its gory detail, for anyone, Heidi Under a Rock, who has missed it this morning. |
... |
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