Suicide-case Tory `tried to leak` video of rival performing a sex act

Transcription

The Mail on Sunday SEPTEMBER 27 • 2015
1ST
Weather
Orkney
18
THE man expected to become
the new president of Fifa was
warned yesterday that his
future is in ‘great doubt’ after
he was dragged into the
football corruption scandal.
UEFA boss Michel Platini
x by Swiss
was questioned
x
x
prosecutors on Friday
over
x
a payment
x of £1.3 million
he received from Fifa
x
presidentx Sepp
Blatter,
now
x
at the centre of a criminal
investigation. Afterwards,
Platini said: ‘I was pleased
to have been able to clarify
all matters relating to this
with the authorities.’
But asked if 60-year-old
Platini’s accession was still on
track, Gordon Taylor, head of
Shetland
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KEY
Wind speed
(mph)
5
17
13
Temperature
Centigrade
16
-3 12
17
8
18
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18
13
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18
Channel Islands
UK FORECAST
GENERAL FORECAST
Much of the UK will see mist patches
lift away to leave a fine day with a
good deal of sunshine but the
Northern Isles and north-west
Scotland will be cloudy, while the
Western Isles will see some light
rain. Winds mostly light, but breezy
across the Western Isles and English
Channel coasts.
REGIONAL FORECASTS
London, East Anglia, Wales, Midlands,
North West: After early mist clears, it
will be dry and fine with prolonged
sunshine. Wind SE light. Max 19C 66F.
South West, South, South East,
Channel Islands: Patches of mist will
disperse, leaving sunny skies and
little cloud. Wind: E moderate to
fresh. Max 19C 66F.
North East: Fog will lift, slowly in
places, to give a fine autumn day
with plenty of sunshine. Wind S
light. Max 18C 64F.
Scotland: Cloudy in the islands and
north-west, but sunny elsewhere.
Wind S light for most, fresh over
Western Isles. Max 19C 66F.
Northern Ireland, Eire: Dry and
bright with sunny spells. Wind S
light, moderate along western
fringes. Max 18C 64F.
WEEK AHEAD
Tomorrow will see fog lift to leave
plenty of sunshine but it will be
breezy in the south and west.
Tuesday through Thursday will
remain dry with sunny spells,
though southern parts will be
breezy. Friday and Saturday may see
more cloud across southern areas,
where it will remain blustery.
WEATHER WATCH John Kettley
Ten years ago the Atlantic witnessed a record-breaking hurricane season
with 27 named storms, including Katrina, Wilma and Rita. Average winds
peaked close to 175mph. Katrina was one of the five deadliest hurricanes
in history. This year is significantly quieter in the Atlantic Basin, in part due
to the onset of El Nino, which typically brings fewer tropical storms to this
region but also impacts significantly in other parts of the world. Droughts
are more likely in Australia and South East Asia while wet weather can be
expected in California.
Britain is now enjoying a quiet spell to end a very changeable September
when rainfall has been up and temperatures down. This may change
abruptly later in the week as October arrives.
MON
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TUE
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WED
18
14
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THU
18
13
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FRI
17
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14
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THE ‘Tatler Tory’ suspended in
a controversy over a party
worker who committed suicide
has admitted trying to leak a
video of another Conservative
activist engaging in a sex act.
Mark Clarke, 38, who ran
David Cameron’s youth ‘Road
Trip’ during the Election,
approached a well-known media
outlet over a video of a rival
lured into performing a sexual
act on a fake internet account.
The Mail on Sunday has been
told Clarke wanted the film
posted on a prominent website
to embarrass the individual.
The disclosure follows the
death of Elliott Johnson, former
political editor of Conservative
Way Forward (CWF), amid
claims he was bullied.
Three Tory aides – Clarke,
Sam Armstrong and India
Brummitt – have been
suspended from next week’s
Conservative conference as a
result. Clarke, who was tipped
as a future Cabinet Minister by
POLITICAL EDITOR
Tatler magazine in 2008, last
night admitted he had told a
leading website about the video
– but claimed he did so in an
attempt to expose the scandal.
Far from trying to embarrass
the Tory aide who featured in it,
he insisted that his aim was to
help him and to protect others
from similar attacks.
Clarke added that he had also
been targeted by the account,
and approached the media outlet after Tory chiefs had refused
his pleas to help him get the film
removed from the internet.
This newspaper has decided
not to disclose the identity of
the man in the video.
Clarke told The Mail on
Sunday last night: ‘I worked
hard to secure the removal of
this video from the internet.
‘When Conservative HQ failed
to act, I discussed with a media
At The Mail on Sunday we take great pride
in the quality of our journalism. All our
journalists are required to observe the
Editors’ Code of Practice and The Mail on
Sunday is a member of the Independent
Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), the
regulatory body for the Press set up in
response to the Leveson Inquiry. We aim
to correct any errors as promptly as
possible.
SAT
17
12
14
15
16
16
14
14
15
14
16
14
In last week’s Sport pages we
said that the Royal London Cup
travelled 118 miles north from Lord’s
after Gloucestershire beat Surrey.
Of course, the direction stated
should have been west.
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Degrees C
-20-0
1-5
6-10
11-15
16-20
21-25
26-30
31-40
money is said to relate to
work Platini did between
1999 and 2002 as 79-year-old
Blatter’s special adviser.
Platini said in a statement :
‘Concerning the payment that
was made to me . . . I wish to
state that this amount relates
to work which I carried out
under a contract with Fifa.’
It is unclear what the former
France international did for
Zurich-based Fifa to justify
such a large sum, since he
By Simon Walters
CORRECTIONS &
CLARIFICATIONS
EUROPE WEEK AHEAD
Unsettled across
southern Europe,
with heavy
rain and
thunderstorms.
Northern
Scandinavia will
see some rain,
and north-east
Europe will also
turn wetter. The
rest of Europe
should be dry.
the UK’s Professional
Footballers’ Association, said
yesterday: ‘It puts a great
doubt over that.’
Blatter, who steps down
as president next year, is
under investigation for
criminal mismanagement of
Fifa funds. He is suspected of
making the ‘disloyal’ payment
to Platini in 2011. Under Swiss
law, a payment is classified
‘disloyal’ if it is against the
interests of the employer. The
was living in Paris at the time
and involved in numerous
unrelated projects.
Blatter’s lawyer Richard
Cullen insisted there had
been ‘no mismanagement’.
Both Blatter and Platini are
now understood to be under
formal investigation by
FIFA’s independent ethics
committee and could be
suspended within days.
Full story: Sport, Pages 16,17
Suicide-case Tory ‘tried
to leak’ video of rival
performing a sex act
SIX-DAY FORECAST
LONDON
ABERDEEN
BELFAST
BIRMINGHAM
CANTERBURY
CARDIFF
GLASGOW
LEEDS
MANCHESTER
NEWCASTLE
NORWICH
PLYMOUTH
Platini’s future ‘in great doubt’
over £1.3million Fifa payment
TATLER TORY: Mark Clarke
outlet exposing the existence
of the fake account to expose
these unfair attacks on me and
other activists.’
He said he had also offered
the individual legal advice.
A well-placed source said:
‘Clarke wanted the film in a
prominent place on the internet
and had a copy of the film. He
was keen to supply all the
details.’ The incident is the
latest episode in a power struggle between young Tories in
Clarke’s ‘Road Trip’ and CWF.
Like Johnson, the individual in
the sex video was also a member
of CWF.
Mr Clarke, who stood in the
2010 General Election, was
suspended pending an internal
investigation after Elliott
Johnson, 21, was found dead at a
railway station in Bedfordshire
earlier this month.
It is understood that Conservative Party headquarters has
received at least 25 official
complaints about the behaviour
of Mr Clarke, including one
from Sarah-Jane Sewell, who
resigned from Conservative
Future because she had been
‘besmirched in the most
abhorrent fashion’ by unnamed
individuals in the Tory youth
movement as a result of ‘human
bear-baiting’ on social media.
After Mr Clarke first appeared
in Tatler, a former girlfriend
came forward to complain he
had treated her ‘appallingly’
during a recent romance.
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16
CONFERENCE SEASON 2015 TORY BULLY EXCLUSIVE
Menacing blackmail threats made to young activist
By Simon Walters, Brendan
Carlin and Tim Walker
THE Tory Party was last night
rocked by claims that blackmail,
drugs, adultery and thuggery are
linked to the death of a Conservative official.
The controversy over the suicide
of Tory activist Elliott Johnson took
a dramatic turn after a secret tape
recording sent to police days before
his death was obtained by The Mail
on Sunday.
The tape, made by Johnson, shows
how he was bullied by Mark Clarke,
who ran David Cameron’s Road Trip
2015 Election campaign, and fellow
Conservative Andre Walker in a
menacing showdown in a pub.
Clarke – once dubbed a ‘Tatler
Tory’ and tipped as a future Cabinet
Minister – Walker and fellow Conservative Sam Armstrong have been
banned from the party conference
following allegations that Johnson’s
death was connected to bullying.
He was found dead next to a railway track in Bedfordshire last
month and his family believe he
took his own life. Our investigation
has established that:
 In a chilling tape recording of a
90-minute ‘kangaroo court’ in a pub,
Clarke, 37, threatened to ruin Johnson, 21, by exposing a minor Twitter
gaffe he made at an election count;
 Clarke’s sidekick Walker called
Johnson a ‘f****** d***h***’ and
compared him to a Nazi collaborator
for complaining about Clarke;
 In a letter to Tory chairman Lord
Feldman, Johnson accused Clarke
of ‘virtually beating him up’ in a
separate pub clash.
The scandal has sent shockwaves
through Conservative high command. Clarke is said to have made
similar threats against other Tory
officials who complained about him.
In the recording, Johnson said they
included allegations of ‘adultery’.
The Mail on Sunday revealed last
week how Clarke tried to leak a
video of another Tory rival duped
into performing a lewd sex act in a
film sent to a fake website in the
name of a French woman. The victim says he was told to pay £2,500
‘blackmail’ to avoid the video being
put online. When he refused, it was
posted on YouTube.
Clarke has admitted trying to leak
the video to the media, but insisted
it was to stop the scam.
He is also accused of trying to leak
allegations concerning cocaine and
Revealed:
Secret tape
of ‘Tatler
Tory’ bullying
suicide victim
Don’t slag me off. You are running
CLAIMS: The Mail on Sunday’s
report on Mark Clarke last week
a senior female Tory aide who complained about him. He denies it.
It is not the first time he has hit the
headlines. Before the 2010 Election,
when he stood as a Parliamentary
candidate, his nurse girlfriend
revealed his ‘appalling’ behaviour.
The new scandal comes after
Clarke was praised by Cameron for
leading Road Trip 2015, which
involved sending busloads of young
Tories into target seats to drum up
votes. There were also claims of
boozing and sexual high jinks.
Cameron and Clarke – the former
chairman of Conservative Future,
the party’s youth wing – shared a
platform at the party’s National
Convention in July.
But Clarke’s triumph turned sour
as Tory chiefs received up to 25
complaints against him.
Some involved his alleged treatment of women. Others, like the one
by Johnson, who edited the website
of the Conservative Way Forward
HANDSHAKE: Clarke with David Cameron
group, set up in honour of Margaret
Thatcher, involved bullying.
In the pub tape, Clarke and Walker,
both nearly twice as old as Johnson,
act like ‘heavies’ in a scene from
TV’s Minder. Against a background
of thumping disco music, they can
be heard bullying Johnson.
Clarke makes a series of cold, calculating threats, backed by wild,
foul-mouthed outbursts by Walker.
It culminates in a direct threat
over an incident in Johnson’s student days at a Euro elections count.
He tweeted some results before
THIS is the secret tape
recording made by Elliott
Johnson of his pub
showdown with Tory
colleagues Mark Clarke
and Andre Walker.
Johnson refuses to
apologise for complaining
to party chiefs about
Clarke’s alleged attack on
him in a different pub,
while Clarke appears to
try to blackmail Johnson
by threatening to expose
a police caution from his
student days.
they were announced, not knowing
it was against election law. He was
cautioned by police, but assured it
was a minor matter.
In the tape, Clarke urges him to
withdraw his complaint and menacingly asks Johnson about his plan to
work for a Tory MP. ‘Have you spoken to the Commons authorities
about your [police] caution?’ Johnson accuses Clarke of threatening
him and hits back: ‘I don’t appreciate tactics like that. And I doubt it’s
the first time you’ve done it.’
Johnson also accuses Clarke of
DAMNING TRANSCRIPT
Elliott Johnson (EJ): ‘I’m
here for an apology, Mark.’
Mark Clarke (MC): ‘That’s
not going to happen.’
EJ: ‘It’s not right to bully
people in pubs.’
Andre Walker (AW):
‘Everyone who (inaudible)
with the Vichy Government
got shot in the end. F******
d*** h***.’
MC: ‘I said to you, “Don’t
‘attacking’ him in Westminster’s
Marquis Of Granby pub, a stone’s
throw from the Commons, on
August 12, adding: ‘You behaved
disgracefully.’
Johnson tells Clarke: ‘You bloody
well need a kick up the a*** doing
that kind of thing. CCHQ [Tory HQ]
don’t like you.’ He added ‘every man
and his dog’ knew the complaints
against Clarke included adultery.
Married Clarke replies: ‘Adultery?’ Johnson: ‘I’m telling you what
they are going to say. I don’t give a
toss.’ In his formal complaint to
slag me off”.’
AW: ‘You [EJ] behaved
disgracefully! You’ve taken
a cardinal rule and stamped
all over it! They [names two
senior Tory enemies of
Clarke] are c****.’
EJ (to MC): ‘It was
disgraceful to attack me
in the pub.’
MC: ‘I was disappointed
you were telling lies about
Lord Feldman after the Marquis Of
Granby incident, Johnson wrote:
‘Mark held me down on my bar stool
with one hand on my shoulder, saying he would destroy my career.
‘He said he “squashed problems
like ants when they are small and
young and this is what I am going
to do to you!” He shouted at me,
bullied and interrogated me for
half an hour.’
Johnson added: ‘I feared he would
attack me. He then brought up the
police caution. I have never covered it up. He said he would destroy
17
OCTOBER 4 • 2015 The Mail on Sunday
at ‘kangaroo court’... in revenge for adultery rumours
THE BULLY
...AND HIS
VICTIM
Who’s the
cleverest in
the Cabinet?
Ask Cable
TRAGIC SUICIDE NOTE
BEFORE THE STORM: Former
Tory star Mark Clarke, left, with
tragic youngster Elliott Johnson
By Simon Walters
POLITICAL EDITOR
LAST WORDS: The note written by Elliott Johnson, who was found dead on September 15
DAY OUT: Mark Clarke, circled front, and Andre Walker, rear, are heard on the tape recording
down a road you shouldn’t be on
me. People in the
Conservative family should
be fighting the enemy, not
each other.’
EJ: ‘Until the virtual beat-up in
the bar, I wasn’t go to do
anything. You bloody well
need a kick up the a*** for
doing that kind of stuff to
people. CCHQ [Tory HQ]
don’t like you.’
MC: ‘What do you know
about other complaints?’
EJ: ‘Every man and his dog
knows… in a generic sense.’
MC: ‘Generic?’
my career. He was shouting that I
was a criminal and it would be all
across the front pages of national
newspapers unless I apologised.
‘I tried to drink my pint but he
grabbed my hand and said, “Stop
drinking and look at me!” He grabbed
my chin to make sure I was.
‘When I told him he was mad, he
said he hoped I had psychiatric
reports proving his mental illness or
he would sue. He told me not to tell
anyone else about the incident and
not to complain. I am deeply upset.’
When Clarke heard about John-
EJ: ‘Adultery, other things.’
MC: ‘Adultery?’
EJ: ‘I don’t give a toss!’
MC: ‘People are putting
complaints about me
and adultery?’
EJ: ‘I don’t f****** care! It is
all going a bit s*** [for EJ] at
the moment.’
MC: ‘Did [names two other
Tory foes] encourage you
to complain?’
EJ: ‘They knew. They’re
my friends.’
MC: ‘You can’t put toothpaste
back in the tube. Politics is a
son’s complaint, another pub meeting was arranged. This time,
Johnson secretly taped it and sent
it to police – and Tory chiefs –
before he died on September 15.
In a suicide note seen by this
newspaper, he wrote: ‘I have been
bullied by Mark Clarke and
betrayed by Andre Walker.
‘All my political bridges are burnt.
Where can I go from here?’ John-
long game. Be careful
about making irreversible
decisions.’
EJ: ‘My mistake was getting
involved.’
MC: ‘Are you desperate for
a job for rent and stuff?
Savings? Parents?’
EJ: [Says he wants to be
MP’s aide].
MC: ‘Have you told the
Commons authorities about
your caution?’
EJ: ‘Robert Halfon [Tory
deputy chairman] said it’s
no problem. It’s weird you
son’s father Ray says he may launch
a private prosecution to track down
those he blames for his son’s death
if police take no action.
‘Elliott was not a depressive boy,’
he told The Mail on Sunday. ‘He
was subjected to a long and nasty
campaign of intimidation in the
Tory Party, yet nothing was done.’
In a statement last night, Mr
Clarke repeated an earlier denial
saying, “We know you have
this [problem], we’re going to
tell the Press”. I don’t
appreciate tactics like that –
and I doubt it’s the first time
you have done it.’
MC: [inaudible].
EJ (to AW): ‘If he [MC]
apologised I’d withdraw it.’
AW: ‘For f***’s sake…
You’ve ended up running
down a road you don’t want
to be on. People have been
let down.’
MC: ‘I don’t care, I’m going.’
EJ: ‘See you, Mark.’
that he had ‘bullied or harassed’
Johnson. He denied threatening to
expose Johnson’s police caution or a
woman Tory official who allegedly
took drugs. Nor had he made threats
against other Conservatives.
He said the Tory Party had put a
number of complaints to him, but
none included adultery.
Mr Walker dismissed the allegations against him as ‘rubbish’.
LABOUR STARS PLUNGE KNIVES INTO CORBYN
PAGES 18-19
GEORGE Osborne’s aim of
becoming Prime Minister has
received an unexpected boost –
from his former Coalition sparring
partner Vince Cable.
The former Liberal Democrat
Minister paid tribute to Osborne’s
‘exceptional intellect, depth and
trusting nature’.
Cable showered praise on the
qualities of both the Chancellor and
David Cameron – but said he came
to prefer Osborne when they
served together in the Cabinet.
‘Osborne is extraordinarily
bright, very strategic, a good
listener and very thoughtful,’ Cable
told The Mail on Sunday.
Having regarded Tories as ‘the
enemy’ throughout his political
career, he had been won over by
their talent when working
alongside them in the Cabinet.
‘Cameron and Osborne are
probably two of the cleverest
people of their generation, and I
mean that,’ said Cable. ‘To see
Cameron chairing a complicated
discussion on a military or political
matter was very impressive.’
Asked to compare the two, Cable
said: ‘Osborne had a more strategic
view and a very clear sense of what
he was trying to achieve.
‘I personally got on better with
him. I found Cameron quite hard to
converse with.
‘He is not as deep – he is more
like Tony Blair, a great showman,
a lovely man, and he speaks very
well. But I’m not sure there is a
great deal behind it, whereas in
Osborne’s case there is.
‘He’s a very trusting, deep guy,
especially if you get him on a
subject he knows a lot about. He is
very knowledgeable about Wagner’s
operas and goes to Bayreuth [in
Germany] to listen to them.’
Osborne’s recent trip to China
showed another side to his
character – ‘He really knows
something about China – it’s not
just political tourism.’ But the
former Business Secretary added
that Osborne was not without flaws:
‘He can be too cynical and ruthless.’
An extra-hot
red box to go...
THE PM posed reluctantly for a
selfie with customer Dominic
Shelmerdine at a Starbucks in
London on Friday, possibly
because he was somewhat
busy... reading papers from his
official red box. Doesn’t he
have an office nearby to go to?
16
PARTIES AT WAR: SHAME OF TORY SVENGALI
The Mail on Sunday OCTOBER 11 • 2015
Tory women blow
election guru who
By Simon Walters
POLITICAL EDITOR
SHOCKING claims of violent sexual
abuse by one of David Cameron’s
top Election aides have been
reported to Conservative chiefs.
Three female Tory whistleblowers
say senior aide Mark Clarke, who
ran the party’s Road Trip 2015,
attacked and threatened them.
One says he forced her against a
wall and demanded sex; a second
claims he threatened to ‘destroy
her’ after she stood up to him; and
a third alleged he molested her in a
bathroom when she was 17.
Two of the women say that he
bragged of using alcohol to make
women sleep with him, calling it
his ‘IIP’ technique: ‘Isolate, Inebriate and Penetrate.’ They are among
more than 20 Tories who have complained to an official party inquiry
linked to the suicide of young Conservative aide Elliott Johnson.
British Transport Police have
launched an investigation after
the 21-year-old was found dead by a
railway track last month. His
funeral took place on Friday.
Clarke and two other Tory aides
were banned from last week’s party
conference after Johnson had
accused them of bullying. Johnson’s
suicide note said that he had been
bullied by Clarke. Tory chiefs have
passed on complaints to police, who
have already interviewed some of
the whistleblowers.
Clarke is also accused of preying
on women in a 100-strong team of
WHISTLEBLOWER ONE
He shoved me
into a doorway,
grabbed me
and said he
wanted sex
WHISTLEBLOWER TWO
He bragged of
his ‘‘IIP’’ tactic:
‘‘Isolate, Inebriate,
Penetrate’’
‘He started running
his hands over me’
young Tory activists on his Road
Trip campaign. Some of those on
the trail were as young as 16.
Tory HQ handed out up to £250
a night to provide free drinks for the
activists as they toured key constituencies and stayed in hotels.
Once dubbed a ‘Tatler Tory’ and
tipped for the Cabinet, Clarke allegedly used bullying and blackmail
to try to control the Tory youth
movement and become an MP.
Conservative chiefs now face
calls to explain why Clarke, a known
womaniser, was allowed to take
charge of an Election team involving
young girls.
He has told friends he once accidentally dislocated the jaw of one of
his lovers when he slapped her during a consensual sex session, requiring her to seek hospital treatment in
the early hours. He said they told
doctors it was a ‘netball injury’.
Newly ennobled Baroness Emma
Pidding, a personal and political
ally of Clarke and chairman of his
rebranded Road Trip 2020, also
faces questions. She arranged for
Clarke to be feted by Cameron in
public at the Conservative National
Convention in July.
Tory HQ has been told married
Clarke, 37, regularly shared a room
with his mistress, India Brummitt,
in Road Trip overnight stays.
Brummitt is a Commons aide to
Tory MP Claire Perry who advises
David Cameron on how to curb the
‘sexualisation of children’.
Clarke’s physical attack on John-
‘THREATS’:
Mark Clarke,
far left,
with Elliott
Johnson,
who killed
himself
last month.
Above: Last
week’s Mail
on Sunday
son in a Westminster pub in August,
witnessed by dozens of Tory aides,
triggered protests by those who had
suffered similarly at his hands.
Incredibly, Clarke stepped up his
threats and intimidation to try to
silence them. Johnson refused
to back down in a second pub confrontation with Clarke days before
his death on September 15.
Now two Tory women whistleblowers who gave evidence against
Clarke to Tory chiefs have spoken
to The Mail on Sunday in return for
remaining anonymous.
One, aged 20, revealed how Clarke
targeted her on a Road Trip visit
to Harlow, Essex. She said: ‘We were
walking down a street late at night.
He waited until the others with us
had moved ahead and shoved me
into a doorway. He grabbed me by
the neck and started running his
hands over me. He said he wanted
to sleep with me and named the
hotel where he wanted to take me.
Luckily someone came round the
corner and I managed to get away
but he didn’t give up.
‘He kept pursuing me with text
messages trying to arrange a date
and time. I wouldn’t call it attempted
rape but it was
certainly an
assault.’
She said that
Clarke’s attack on
Johnson in Westminster’s Marquis of Granby
pub on August 12,
when he grabbed
the young aide and
made wild threats
over a petty dispute, was the
tipping point.
‘Everyone saw it,’
she said. ‘People
were not prepared
to stay quiet any longer.’
The second whistleblower said
Clarke ‘mentally abused’ her after
they had a sexual relationship when
she was in her 20s and he helped
her obtain a high-profile role.
‘He would shout things like, “If
you betray me I will ruin your life. I
will destroy you telling lies to the
Press.” ’ Their relationship ended
and, after the Election – when she
told him she was leaving Road Trip
– Clarke confronted her in a bar.
‘He put his face in mine and
screamed at me saying I was “dead”
and “toast”, and he would stop me
becoming a Conservative candidate,’ she said. ‘I was crying. No one
complained about Mark on Road
Trip because there was a culture of
fear. Most were very young and who
could they complain to? He was in
charge. He acted like a sexual predator and enjoyed rough sex. Yet he
was put in charge of 100 or so young
people, including many girls staying
in hotels. He boasts of what he calls
his “IIP” method of making women
sleep with him – Isolate, Inebriate,
Penetrate. It is appalling.’
She claims Clarke grabbed her
phone to delete Facebook messages
he had sent her so Tory bosses could
not see them. The whistleblower
also alleges that when Johnson committed suicide, Clarke’s allies tried
to bully her into taking the blame.
The whistleblower said hours
after Johnson’s death Ms Brummitt
told her to “keep your f****** mouth
shut”. ‘She knew I had seen Elliott
the night before he died when he
told me how upset he was,’ the
whistleblower added.
‘She made it clear she would use
that to falsely suggest it was my
fault. I told CCHQ.’ Ms Brummitt
was involved in an angry exchange
with one of the whistleblowers at
the Tory conference last week.
A third female whistleblower has
told Conservative chiefs Clarke
sexually molested her in a bathroom at a Tory event when she was
Hammond’s
PHILIP Hammond has
abandoned his ambitions to
become Tory leader after David
Cameron steps down, The Mail
on Sunday understands.
The Foreign Secretary had
long been tipped as a possible
successor to Mr Cameron, and
there were claims that he was
planning to join Home
Secretary Theresa May to offer
a so-called ‘dream ticket’.
They were even nicknamed the
‘Top Gear team’ after James
OCTOBER 11 • 2015 The Mail on Sunday
17
V1
whistle on sex pest
bullied suicide aide
Apprentice
star Karren:
Welcome to
Britain... IF
you speak
English
FALLEN STAR:
Mark Clarke with
David Cameron
at last year’s Tory
party conference.
Above: Clarke’s
mistress India
Brummitt
17. Meanwhile, a male whistleblower has told Tory HQ that
Clarke targeted him after he
complained about Clarke’s sexual harassment of his girlfriend on Road Trip.
The victim said he was duped
into performing a sex act on
a fake video site and asked for
£2,500 to stop it being posted
on his girlfriend’s Facebook
page. When he refused, the
threat was carried out.
He claims Clarke was responsible and complained to
Tory HQ. Clarke denies it, but
admitted trying to leak the
video. He said it was in order to
‘help’ the victim of the scam.
One of Clarke’s allies, Andre
Walker – who was also banned
from the conference – turned
on Clarke last week. The former
aide to Tory MP David Morris
told The Mail on Sunday that
Clarke was a ‘nasty piece of
work’. Clarke hit the headlines
when he stood as a parliamentary candidate in Tooting at
the 2010 Election. He lost after
an ex-girlfriend accused him of
‘appalling’ behaviour.
The Mail on Sunday revealed
last week how, just days before
his death, Johnson accused
‘If you betray me
I will ruin your life’
Clarke of trying to blackmail
him in a secretly recorded
showdown at The Imperial
Durbar pub in Tooting. Johnson sent the recording to police.
Challenged a week ago, Clarke
denied any wrongdoing and
said the bullying allegations
were a false attempt to stop
dream is over
May and Richard Hammond,
presenters of the BBC car show.
But it is thought the Foreign
Secretary has instead decided to
support Chancellor George
Osborne to lead the party.
Mr Hammond, 59, has told
friends he no longer sees himself
as a future leader, partly
because he does not want the
pressure on his family life.
It is thought he has now set
his sights on becoming
Chancellor under Mr Osborne.
him exposing ‘endemic drug
use’ by young Tories.
‘I highlighted this with the
individuals concerned – some
tried to silence me with false
bullying allegations,’ he said.
‘The party’s response was to
ignore and then suspend me.
I wish they would take my
concerns more seriously.’ Neither Clarke nor Ms Brummitt
responded to calls yesterday.
A Tory spokeswoman added:
‘We are taking our inquiry
extremely seriously and need
to establish all the facts. We
cannot say anything further.’
Neither Mr Clarke nor Ms
Brummitt responded to calls
yesterday.
l Last Sunday’s article said,
incorrectly, that India Brummitt was among those barred
from the Tory conference. We
are happy to make clear this
was not the case.
APPRENTICE star Karren Brady
last night stepped into the immigration
row by telling people coming to
Britain that they are welcome – as long
as they can speak English.
The Government’s small business
tsar and Tory peer says she has no
problem with immigrants starting a
new life in the UK if they are prepared
to pay their way and fit in.
Baroness Brady, 46, said: ‘If you want
to come, pay your taxes, make a
contribution, speak the language and
improve society, then you are very
welcome. The line is difficult when
people get worried about economic
migrants or those who don’t contribute
or don’t fit into a cohesive society.’
Her comments came just days after
Home Secretary Theresa May’s speech
at the Tory conference when she
warned mass immigration was a
threat to national cohesion.
Mrs May’s remarks divided opinion
and were criticised by business
leaders, who insisted that immigrants
do boost the economy.
Brady, who also vice-chairman of
West Ham United, said she thought
that the entrepreneurial spirit was
alive and well in Britain: ‘You have
more women in work than ever before,
more young people getting into work,
more apprenticeships, more support
around business.
‘We are a great nation of
entrepreneurs and that is something we
PA / REUTERS
By Chris Hastings
should celebrate.’ The businesswoman
– who is expected to be named
tomorrow as one of the supporters
of the campaign to keep Britain in the
EU – will be back on our screens on
Wednesday for the new series of The
Apprentice. She has been a regular on
the BBC show since 2010 and will once
more act as the eyes and ears of Lord
Sugar, keeping an eye on the efforts of
the 18 contestants.
She revealed she had decided not to
use her title on the show to avoid
embarrassing fellow adviser Claude
Littner, a long-standing business
associate of Lord Sugar.
She joked: ‘It wouldn’t be fair on
Claude. You have got a Lord, a
Baroness and then there’s Claude.
Because I am more with the candidates
than in the boardroom it’s more
difficult to keep referring to the title.’
The mother of two also said she
has no interest in taking over from
Lord Sugar should he ever decide to
stand down. ‘I will not be heading the
show. When Alan decides he is too tired
I’ll be too tired.’
She revealed she had turned down the
chance to appear on shows such as
Strictly Come Dancing and I’m A
Celebrity: ‘My answer is always no. I
am on The Apprentice because I want
to be, not because I need to be.’
Eurosceptics set sights on Eurovision
SHE became the defining
symbol of the Tories’ Election
win, clasping her hand on
her heart in disbelief
as she toppled Ed Balls,
writes Glen Owen.
Now Andrea Jenkyns
is preparing for the
international stage –
by forming a new
‘sceptical supergroup’
SOPRANO: Ms Jenkyns
of musically talented Tory
MPs who hope to enter the
Eurovision Song Contest.
The Morley and Outwood
MP, who is a professional
soprano, has formed a sevenstrong group that will
specialise in anti-EU tunes.
Asked whether it was true
that the group’s members
were discussing Eurovision,
Ms Jenkyns, 40, said: ‘We
agreed it would be hilarious
KEY
DEMAND:
Karren
Brady
to enter a sceptical song into
the Eurovision Song Contest,
such as Queen’s I Want To
Break Free.’
Other group members
include Culture Select
Committee chairman Jesse
Norman on trumpet, Wyre
Forest’s Mark Garnier on bass,
and Morecambe’s David
Morris, who is a former
session musician for rockers
Whitesnake, on guitar.
HAVING
A BLAST:
Jesse
Norman
3
The Mail on Sunday OCTOBER 18 • 2015
Cameron appoints
top judge to probe
Tatler Tory sex and
blackmail claims
By Simon Walters
POLITICAL EDITOR
DAVID CAMERON has appointed a
top judge to investigate allegations
of blackmail, bullying and sexual
abuse in the Tory Party that were
exposed by The Mail on Sunday.
And the party is to pay a private
health clinic to offer counselling to
activists left traumatised after the
suicide of a young Tory who was
bullied by one of the Prime Minister’s
election aides.
Edward Legard, an Old Etonian contemporary of the Prime Minister, will
lead an inquiry following the suicide
of Elliott Johnson, 21, last month. The
appointment of Legard, 49, comes
after this newspaper revealed how
days before Johnson was found dead
by a railway track, he was bullied and
threatened by Mark Clarke, who ran
the Conservatives’ Road Trip 2015
Election campaign, and fellow Tory
Andre Walker in a secretly recorded
pub showdown.
Clarke, 37 – dubbed a Tatler Tory –
was suspended from the party.
Walker and a Tory official, Sam
Armstrong, also accused of bullying,
were banned from the Conservative
conference in Manchester.
Married Clarke’s mistress, India
Brummitt, an aide to MP Claire Perry,
is also accused of making threats to
prevent Clarke being blamed for
Johnson’s death.
The allegations have sent shockwaves through Tory high command:
a police investigation into Johnson’s
death is under way and several activists have been interviewed.
Mr Cameron has reportedly described
Clarke, the former chairman of the
party’s youth wing Conservative
Future (CF), as ‘a nightmare’.
Party chairman Lord Feldman has
recruited a private health clinic, Yorkshire-based Westfield Health, to offer
counselling to traumatised Tories.
In an email to CF activists last week,
Feldman said: ‘We are undertaking a
formal investigation following complaints of bullying received against a
member of the party. A panel of the
party’s disciplinary committee, under
the chairmanship of Edward Legard,
FLASHBACK: Our report last week on
the allegations facing Mark Clarke, top
will hold a formal inquiry. If any
other complaints are made against
members of the party we will formally
investigate these.’
But Feldman came under fire for
delaying the CF elections until next
June. It means that Clarke’s allies,
including CF deputy chairman Brummitt and fellow official Armstrong,
will retain their posts.
‘People will be too scared to
come forward until Clarke and his
cronies are kicked out for good,’ said
one insider.
Clarke is accused of using blackmail
and physical threats to intimidate
political foes. He reportedly sexually
abused women, including a 17-yearold, on his visits to key constituencies
in the General Election. Clarke says
the bullying allegations were an
attempt to stop him exposing ‘endemic
drug-taking’ by activists.
3
V1
The Mail on Sunday NOVEMBER 8 • 2015
Suicide storm: Police step
up probe into ‘Tatler Tory’
By Simon Walters
POLITICAL EDITOR
POLICE have stepped up their
investigation into the suicide of a
Tory activist who was violently
bullied by one of David Cameron’s
Election aides.
They are to study claims that
Mark Clarke, who bullied young
Conservative Elliott Johnson shortly
before Johnson killed himself, used
blackmail and sex to try to silence
his enemies.
A team, led by Detective Chief
Inspector Sam Blackman, will interview several Tory ‘victims’ of
Clarke, who ran the Prime Minister’s ‘Road Trip’ Election campaign,
over the next few days.
Until now the British Transport
Police inquiry has focused on
Johnson’s suicide on a railway track
in Cambridgeshire in September.
But the investigation has been
intensified after shocking disclosures by The
Mail on Sunday about
Clarke, dubbed a ‘Tatler
Tory’ after he was among
a group of young Conservatives tipped for
Cabinet success by the society
magazine in 2008.
It includes a tape recording made
by Johnson, 21, a journalist, shortly
...as top party grandee says: Banish him
‘MENACE’: Clarke, right, and
Elliott Johnson in the striped
shirt. Donal Blaney, above,
and, below, victim’s family
demand probe in the MoS
before he died, and which he sent to
police, which shows Clarke bullying
him in a pub.
The new police move came as a
Conservative grandee criticised
party chiefs for failing to take
tougher action against Clarke, 37, a
consultant with Unilever.
Donal Blaney, chairman of the
Conservative Way Forward campaign group, where Johnson worked,
said Clarke, currently suspended
from the party, should be thrown out
permanently by Tory chairman
Lord Feldman – now.
Lawyer Mr Blaney, a close friend
of several Cabinet Ministers, said
Clarke had violently threatened him
twice, including once on the House
of Commons terrace.
He said: ‘He started effing and
blinding at me over something
trivial. I told him I would not put up
with it. He went totally berserk. His
temper goes from nought to 60 miles
per hour in a second. It is very scary.
It’s no wonder people, me included,
feel intimidated by him.’
Mr Blaney got to know Clarke
through the Young Britons’ Foundation, an organisation set up by Mr
Blaney to find future Tory leaders.
Clarke allegedly assaulted a
female Tory official when he ‘gatecrashed’ a YBF event in Washington
DC in the summer.
Mr Blaney banned Clarke from
the YBF in August, after he physically threatened Johnson in Westminster’s Marquis of Granby pub in
front of shocked bystanders.
Mr Blaney said: ‘Mark Clarke is a
menace. I find it surprising, to say
the least, that two months after his
appalling treatment of Elliott came
to light, he is still a member of the
Conservative Party. The party must
show that it will not tolerate this
kind of behaviour.’
Mr Blaney said he regretted not
taking a tougher stance on Clarke
sooner: ‘Like so many others who
had dealings with Mark Clarke, I
wish I had done more to stand up to
him and I am sorry that I did not.
‘All I can do now is ensure that
lessons are learned and nothing like
this ever happens again.’
Mr Blaney is introducing a YBF
’anti-bullying’ code to protect members in the wake of the Clarke scandal. And he is introducing a summer
internship award in memory of Elliott for an aspiring young journalist.
Three female Tory whistleblowers
have revealed how Clarke attacked
and threatened them. One said he
forced her against a wall and
demanded sex. A second claimed he
threatened to ‘destroy her’ after she
stood up to him. And a third alleged
he molested her in a bathroom when
she was a teenager.
Clarke has also bragged of using
alcohol to ensnare women, calling it
his ‘IIP’ technique: ‘Isolate, Inebriate and Penetrate.’.
A male Tory official also claimed
Clarke tried to blackmail him by
duping him into performing a sex
act on a fake internet site.
4
V3
Cabinet Minister in
By Simon Walters
POLITICAL EDITOR
THE Tories were rocked by a
new scandal last night after a
Cabinet Minister confessed to an
affair after being told he faced a
blackmail plot by a senior aide to
David Cameron.
The Minister informed No 10 he
had been told Tory director Mark
Clarke intended to film him and his
female lover leaving a London club
where they met for trysts.
He ended the six-month affair in
May, the same month in which his
lover, who holds a high profile Conservative post, was tipped off about
the alleged blackmail plot.
The Minister kept quiet until Tory
activist Elliott Johnson killed
himself in September after he
had been bullied by Clarke – who
was publicly feted by Mr Cameron
after running the Party’s ‘Road
Trip 2015’ campaign.
He owned up to Downing Street
and Tory Party chairman Lord
Feldman. He also told his longterm female partner.
The sensational disclosure comes
amid panic in the Tory high command over the scandal. One party
veteran said it was ‘beginning to
resemble a new real-life version of
House of Cards’, the 1990s TV series
– recently adapted for a US version
starring Kevin Spacey – involving
skulduggery in the Tory Party.
The Mail on Sunday is aware of
the names of the Minister and his
lover but has decided not to publish
them. The Minister said: ‘Mark
Clarke is an appalling man – I wish
I had never met him. I was stupid.
I hope to repair my relationship
with my partner.’
The Minister’s lover was warned
that a Tory ally of Clarke, Sam
Armstrong, planned to film the
l New ‘Tatler
Tory’ storm as
Election aide
is accused of
scheme to film
secret trysts
l Politician
confesses to
affair after he
is warned he’d
be forced into
giving favours
POLITICAL EDITOR
T
OCTOBER 11
Three female
whistleblowers
claim they were
attacked and
threatened by
Mark Clarke
OCTOBER 18
The Prime
Minister acts
as scandal
grows over
bullying,
blackmail and
abuse claims
OCTOBER 4 Our exclusive revelations
rock the Tory conference season
the Party. There would be no prospect of Mr Clarke being allowed to
apply to be a Conservative Party
candidate of any kind, or represent
the Party in any respect, again.’
Clarke, an executive with consumer goods giant Unilever, claims
he has been targeted by Tory HQ
because he threatened to expose
‘endemic drug-taking’ in the party.
In a statement to this newspaper,
Mr Clarke said last night: ‘I strongly
refute any suggestion of bullying,
harassment, blackmail, or intended/
attempted blackmail.’
The Minister told Lord Feldman
in late September he had been
warned he could be targeted by
Clarke over his affair. He confessed
after The Mail on Sunday revealed
claims that Clarke had bullied
Johnson, who had worked for Tory
HQ during the Election.
The Minister first learned of the
alleged blackmail plot in a text
message from his lover: ‘I was told
Clarke and Sam Armstrong were
planning to take photographs of us
coming out of the East India Club.’
A well-placed source said: ‘They
were going to send the incriminating photo to the Minister in a plain
manila envelope so they could
blackmail him,’ said the source.
‘Clarke wanted political favours.’
The Tories and police are investigation a number of allegations
against Clarke. They include a
claim that he tried to entrap the
blackmail Minister’s lover into
being filmed snorting cocaine to
leak it to the media.
He is also accused of blackmail
and revenge porn by a young male
Conservative official. The official
‘The Prime Minister was
furious over scandal’
says he was duped into performing
a sex act on a fake website and
asked for £2,500 to stop it being
posted on his Facebook page.
When he refused, the threat was
carried out. Mr Clarke made a copy
of the film and tried to leak it to the
media. The Mail on Sunday has seen
the film, which shows Clarke recording it on a smartphone camera.
The Tory Party and police are
investigating the claims surrounding Johnson’s death and other
INTERVIEW
By Simon
Walters
How MoS exposed Tory scandal
‘Like a real-life version
of House Of Cards’
couple leaving the East India Club
in the heart of London’s clubland so
that Clarke could ‘blackmail’ the
Minister to gain political favours.
Armstrong is said to be used
regularly by Tory HQ to ‘dig dirt’
on rival Parliamentary candidates.
He has a Commons pass issued
by Thanet South MP Craig Mackinlay, who defeated Nigel Farage
in May’s Election.
He said last night: ‘These accusations are preposterous and belong
in a spy movie not a newspaper. My
role within Road Trip 2015 was
batching leaflets not blackmail.’
The alleged blackmail scandal
comes after Clarke, Armstrong and
another Tory crony, Andre Walker,
were banned from the Tory conference when Johnson committed
suicide. In addition, Clarke was
suspended from the party.
Clarke, 38, was dubbed the ‘Tatler
Tory’ after being tipped by the society magazine for a Cabinet career.
But he faces political ruin and the
risk of criminal prosecution over
claims that he assaulted women
Tory activists and used blackmail,
alcohol, thuggery and sex-anddrugs smears in a vicious Tory
Party power struggle.
Last night, Conservative chairman Lord Feldman, a close friend
and political ally of Mr Cameron,
vowed to expel Clarke from the
party and slap a life ban on him
from standing as a Conservative
MP if the allegations are accurate.
A spokesperson for the peer said:
‘If the allegations against Mr Clarke
are found to be true, the Party Board
will permanently exclude him from
TRAGIC: Elliott
Johnson, right,
with former
Tory high-flyer
Mark Clarke
allegations about Clarke. This
newspaper has learned that
Clarke was quizzed before the
2010 Election by Party chairman
Eric Pickles and Tory Chief
Whip Patrick McLoughlin over
claims of an altercation, but no
action was taken.
The then Conservative chairman
Grant Shapps is also in the firing
line for giving Clarke the title of
Tory ‘director’ when he endorsed
his ‘Road Trip 2015’. It consisted
of bussing young activists into
key constituencies.
Clarke was lauded by Mr Cameron at an Election victory rally.
The Prime Minister was furious
when the full extent of the Clarke
scandal was exposed. He has
long described Clarke privately as
a ‘nightmare.’
The timing of the disclosure is no
coincidence. Clarke’s alleged victims were terrified of speaking out
earlier because it would have damaged their chances of winning.
As they stepped forward, Clarke
intensified his threats to try to
silence them. But he pushed
Johnson too far. The Tories could
sweep the scandal under the carpet
no longer.
HE parents of the
Tory activist who
killed himself after
being bullied by a
senior Election aide
to David Cameron
have vowed to nail
the ‘bastards’ his son blamed for
his suicide.
Ray and Alison Johnson pledged
to win justice for their son
Elliott, 21, who was physically and
mentally abused by Tory director
Mark Clarke, head of the Prime
Minister’s ‘Road Trip’ campaign.
And they want to know why
Conservative chiefs failed to
protect Elliott despite warnings
about Clarke’s thuggish behaviour
going back years.
Speaking to The Mail on Sunday
at their elegant but modestly
furnished Georgian home in
Wisbech in the Cambridgeshire
Fens, Mr and Mrs Johnson told
of their agony at losing their
‘lovely, bright and brave’ son.
He was found dead by a railway
track after being targeted by
burly Clarke, 37, and his
Conservative henchmen.
While grieving, businessman
Mr Johnson, 57, has spent much of
the eight weeks since Elliott’s
death diligently piecing together
the events that led to his suicide.
Convinced the Tory Party is trying
to cover up the truth to protect
senior figures, Mr Johnson is
conducting his own investigation
in parallel to police inquiries.
He is convinced he is fulfilling
his son’s last wish and his own
dossier of evidence includes
damning letters and emails from
Elliott’s computer.
‘If Elliott had wanted to commit
suicide all he had to do was eat a
couple of peanuts: he was allergic
to them. It would have killed
him straight away. It makes me
think he wanted to go out in a
big way. I am convinced he
decided if he was going to go down
he would take Clarke and the
other bastards with him.’
I
T IS an uncharacteristic
flash of rage from Mr
Johnson, who, like his son
is unassuming, intelligent
and decent. But also like
his son, Mr Johnson’s quiet
voice masks a steely core.
‘Elliott was only 5ft 4in but he
always stood up for himself,’ says
Mr Johnson. ‘He loved playing
rugby at school and wanted to be
at the forefront of everything.’
In their search for the truth, the
couple endured a harrowing
ordeal, scrolling through their
son’s computer entries in the days
and hours leading up to his death.
They discovered how he had
returned from a Tory event at the
Commons on September 14 and
starting trawling the internet for
ways of committing suicide.
Eventually, he located an
aerial photograph of an isolated
railway track at Sandy,
Bedfordshire, 50 miles from
his family home, where he killed
himself the next day.
‘He turned his computer off at
5
NOVEMBER 15 • 2015 The Mail on Sunday
sex blackmail plot
Lethal vow
of bullying
victim’s
shattered
parents:
We’ll nail
the b******s
His devastating suicide note... and
treasured photo he took to his death
I could write a hate message. But
actions speak louder than words.
I was never one for hate anyway.
But I think this should be on your mind.
ELLIOTT JOHNSON
6.15pm to go out – until then he’d
been looking at normal political
stuff. He came back from the
Commons at about 11.30pm and
within minutes he was searching
for ways to commit suicide,’ said
Mr Johnson. ‘He looked at various
methods – poisoning and others –
and eventually settled on railways.
He obviously decided “that’s the
way I’m going to go.”
‘He wore a smart shirt and tie
and waistcoat – he loved wearing a
waistcoat,’ says Mrs Johnson.
‘He was so smart he took four
suits to university,’ she smiles.
‘He had his Loake leather shoes
on too, didn’t he?’ interjects her
husband fondly.
‘He put a blue towel between the
tracks to lie on. I suppose he didn’t
want to get wet,’ Mrs Johnson
continues. ‘When I saw his body
in the coffin he was perfect. The
only damage was to his head.’
‘We think he lifted his head at
the last minute,’ says Mr
Johnson, faltering. Mrs Johnson
glances up at her husband as
the undemonstrative English
couple hold back their tears.
As meticulous as his keen
historian dad, Elliott left three
suicide notes: a moving apology
to his parents and two sisters,
and a double-edged message to
‘friends and allies’.
The third – to unnamed ‘bullies
and betrayers’ – is the shortest and
most telling. It says: ‘I could write
a hate message. But actions speak
louder than words. I was never
IDOL: Elliott was clutching this photo
of his grandfather Ray when he died
one for hate anyway. But I think
this should be on your mind.’
Rarely has a boyish 21-year-old’s
scrawled suicide note been
composed with such poetic and
political potency. Mr Johnson says
Elliott never showed any signs of
CRAIG HIBBERT
AGONY:
Ray and
Alison
Johnson at
the family
home
depression. Quite the reverse:
only two months earlier he
graduated from Nottingham
University and achieved his
dream, a job in London as political
editor of the Conservative Way
Forward magazine.
But for all his pluck, Elliott
was never going to be a
match for ruthless and
charismatic manipulator
Clarke, nearly twice his
size and age. The word
most use to describe
Elliott is ‘sweet’; for
Clarke it is usually
‘nasty’ – or much worse.
One of his closest
friends called him a
‘narcissistic sociopath’.
‘Elliott was a lovely boy
– bright but a softie,’ says
Mrs Johnson. Glancing up
at her husband, she adds:
‘He had your brains and
my emotions.’
Elliott’s idealism and
warmth is mirrored by a
photograph he clutched
to him when he died: a
grainy black-and-white
picture of his grandfather,
also called Ray, smiling
while at work on a building site.
Mr Johnson explains: ‘My dad
died long before Elliott was born
but for some reason he idolised
him. I think it was because Dad
was a working man who always
voted Tory. Elliott loved that. He
was Elliott’s working-class hero.
He had two photos of my dad and
treasured them more than
anything.’ When Elliott died and
one of the two photos was missing
from his London flat, Mr Johnson
knew where it would be.
‘I asked the police if they had
found an old photo by the railway
track. When they said they hadn’t
I asked them to look again.’ They
did, and there it was, a few feet
from where Elliott had died.
H
IS passion for politics
first surfaced as a
teenager at Spalding
Grammar School. In
2010 he won a mock
election as the Tory
candidate, thrashing
rivals with 80 per cent of the vote.
‘People used to say he was our
very own William Hague,’ smiles
Mrs Johnson.
Five years later, Elliott’s gift for
writing and campaigning was put
to good use by the Tories in a real
Election campaign. He was part
of the party’s social media
campaign team and impressed
chairman Lord Feldman and chief
strategist Lynton Crosby.
The Johnsons say they will not
be satisfied until those who they
believe led their son to take his
own life are not just thrown out of
the Tory Party but face criminal
prosecution.
If the Conservatives and police
fail to do so, they say they will
consider launching a private
prosecution. They say they owe it
to their ‘sweet’, tragic son.
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INSIDE YOU M
MAgAzINE
THE SEX TAPE
THAT SHAMES
TORY PARTY
REVEALED: Police
in ‘Tatler Tory’ case to
probe revenge porn
video leaked to MoS
THE Tory Party was last night
rocked by the revelation of a
new blackmail plot involving
a bombshell sex video – which
David Cameron’s disgraced
Election aide Mark Clarke tried
to leak to the media.
Clarke, the ‘Tatler Tory’ already at
the heart of a deepening scandal
engulfing the party, made a copy of
the film in which one of his Conservative foes was duped into performing a sex act on the internet.
The ‘victim’ had previously
By Simon Walters
POLITICAL EDITOR
refused to pay a £2,500 blackmail
demand, and the film was then
posted on his Facebook page.
The man, whose name is being
withheld by The Mail on Sunday, has
told police and Conservative chiefs
he believes Clarke was responsible
for the film.
Clarke last night denied he was to
Turn to Page 6 ➤➤
EXPOSED: Duncan
Bannatyne in I’m A
Celebrity with fellow
contestant Jorgie Porter
Jungle star
Bannatyne’s
£10m lie to
judge in his
divorce case
SEE PAgE 0
6
➤➤ From Page One
blame, although he has admitted in
the past that he tried to ‘expose’ the
film via ‘the media’ to help prevent
such scams.
The Mail on Sunday has obtained a
copy of the film as part of our investigation into the scandal engulfing
Clarke, who is accused of bullying a
Conservative activist who later look
his own life. With the consent of the
victim, we are handing the sex film
to police, who are to investigate.
The disclosure came as Clarke was
accused of being involved in an
attempt to entrap a female Conservative enemy into being filmed snorting cocaine, after she was plied with
alcohol at the House of Commons.
The woman was among those who
had complained to Tory HQ about
Clarke’s conduct during the Election campaign.
Incredibly, the sex video plot and
the attempted drugs ‘sting’ occurred
on the same day. They came four
days before both victims were due
to go to Tory HQ on September 7 to
give evidence to the party’s official
inquiry into Clarke.
It is claimed that the plots were
part of his campaign to silence his
accusers. However Clarke says
that he has been targeted by Conservative chiefs because he threatened to expose ‘endemic drug
taking’ in the party.
Clarke, 38, was dubbed the ‘Tatler
Tory’ after the society magazine
tipped him for Cabinet stardom
before the 2010 Election.
But his political career was left in
ruins last week after Conservative
chairman Lord Feldman banned him
from being a member of the party
for life.
Days earlier, this newspaper
revealed how Cabinet Minister
Robert Halfon told No 10 he feared
that Clarke was linked to an attempt
‘Send £2,500 or I’ll put
the film on Facebook’
to blackmail him over an illicit
love affair.
The young male Tory victim of the
sex video has told this newspaper –
in addition to Conservative Campaign Headquarters and the police
– how he was duped into performing
a sex act on Skype by an attractive
blonde woman with a French name.
She first contacted
him on Facebook,
where
they
exchanged messages.
She later made contact on Skype, and
stripped on screen in
front of him. It was at
that point she persuaded him to perform the explicit act
on camera. The victim now believes the
woman never existed,
but was a fake identity
set up for the sting,
which used a prerecorded video of the
strip.
Shortly afterwards
he was shocked to
receive via Skype a
demand for £2,500 – or
the film would be put
on his Facebook page.
The blackmailer said
in broken English:
‘Here’s the list of the
first person who will
see your video if you
continue you play
hard...’ The name of his employer
appeared on screen. The threatening message also gave details of his
personal background to prove the
blackmailer knew who he was.
The garbled message continued: ‘I
begin has published the link to your
video has everything your friends
and family Yes or No.’
Shortly afterwards, he received
another threatening Skype message
stating: ‘Then you will see every-
V1
How Tatler
Tory used
vile revenge
porn film to
humiliate
opponent
THE VIDEO
This is believed to be
an image of Tatler
Tory Mark Clarke
holding a smart phone
to record the sex tape
footage from another
smartphone in his
bedroom
THE THREAT
The victim was duped
into performing a sex
act by a mystery blonde
who contacted him on
Facebook and seemed
to strip live on Skype.
‘She’ then threatened
to publish the video
unless he paid her. He
now thinks the ‘strip’
was pre-recorded and
he was blackmailed by
a someone who could
be a man
The MoS scoops that have
LIFE BAN: Disgraced Tory Mark Clarke with David Cameron
thing what I ask you first and I
delete the video. You’ll me paid a
sum of €3,500 and I delete your
video.’ When he refused, the blackmailer carried out the threat and
posted the video on the victim’s
Facebook page.
It was soon spotted by the victim’s
friends who contacted Tory HQ and
were astonished to find they had
The Mail on Sunday has led the
way in exposing the scandal
involving ‘Tatler Tory’ Mark Clarke
following the suicide of
Conservative aide Elliott Johnson,
who was bullied by Clarke.
In a series of bombshell reports
over the past eight weeks we
revealed how Clarke, a senior
election aide to David Cameron,
was accused of blackmail, sex
assaults and thuggery. It
culminated in our disclosure last
week of how a Cabinet Minister
said he feared he faced a blackmail
threat from Clarke over a love affair.
Three days later Clarke was thrown
out of the party for life.
After ignoring the story for eight
weeks, the rest of the media woke
up to what MoS readers have
known for two months: it is one of
the most shocking political
scandals for years.
already been tipped off – by Clarke.
Clarke also contacted the victim to
inform him. Clarke says he alerted
Tory HQ and the victim because he
had been targeted by the same sex
video scam and wanted to help other
activists targeted in the same way.
The Mail on Sunday has established that Clarke made a copy of
the film and tried to leak it to the
SEPT 7, 015 Less than two weeks after Johnson’s
suicide, we revealed how Clarke allegedly threatened
to leak a video of a Tory activist performing a lewd act
media. Clarke copied the film by
holding a smartphone in his left
hand in order to film the video as it
was screened on another phone. He
also made a screen grab of the video
as it appeared on the victim’s Facebook page, before it was taken down.
When The Mail on Sunday first
approached Clarke about the matter
in September and asked if he was
OCT 4 We
exposed a tape
showing Clarke
threatening to
ruin Johnson
by exposing
a minor
indiscretion as
a henchman
called Johnson
a ‘f******
d******d’.
responsible for the sick blackmail
attempt, he denied it. Asked at that
time if he had copied the film and
tried to leak it to the media, he said
in a statement: ‘When Tory HQ
failed to act, I discussed with a
media outlet exposing the existence
of the fake account to expose these
unfair attacks on me and other activists and to warn other activists and
7
NOVEMBER 22 • 2015 The Mail on Sunday
CLARKE COPIES THE REVENGE PORN FOOTAGE
Minister’s aide
quits over ‘sex on
pub pool table’
with bully Clarke
By Simon Walters
POLITICAL EDITOR
VICTIM TOLD: PAY UP OR WE WILL PUBLISH
l The garbled messages by the ‘French
blonde’ demanding cash from her victim
l The video as it appeared on victim’s
Facebook page after he refused to pay up
engulfed the Tories
OCT 11 We disclosed that three Tory
whistleblowers had accused Clarke
of sexual assault and other threats
OCT 18 Tory chairman Lord Feldman
was forced to appoint a judge to lead
an inquiry into our disclosures
leading party figures.’ Last night he
denied that his statement amounted
to an admission to having tried to
leak the video. In a statement from
Barbados, where he is staying with
his family, he said: ‘I stand by that
[earlier] statement. I did not admit I
tried to leak the video.’
The drugs ‘sting’ occurred after a
party hosted by the Conservative
NOV 8 We revealed how the Tories
called in police to probe possible
criminal offences as a senior Tory
said Clarke had threatened him
NOV 15 We revealed Cabinet
Minister Robert Halfon told No 10 he
feared he was to be blackmailed by
Clarke over a photo of him leaving a
club after a tryst with a lover.
Way Forward group on the Commons terrace on September 3.
Among the guests mingling with
Tory MPs was a prominent female
Party official who had complained
about Clarke.
Also present was Andre Walker,
former chief of staff to Tory MP
David Morris.
Walker is one of Clarke’s key Tory
henchmen, and had helped Clarke
make cruel threats to Elliott Johnson, the Tory activist who killed
himself after complaining of bullying. A secret tape recording in a pub
made by Johnson shows how
Walker called him a ‘f ******
d***head’ while Clarke threatened
to ruin Johnson’s career.
Sources say the female was ‘plied
with drink’ at the Commons reception before she and Walker went to
a party at the Fulham home of
another Tory aide, Will Hanley,
who has a Commons pass issued by
Conservative MP Nigel Adams.
According to one account, the
woman was taken into a room and
given cocaine, which she proceeded to snort. This newspaper
has been told a camera had been
placed on a table in an attempt to
film the woman taking drugs.
There is no suggestion that Mr
Hanley was aware of the incident.
Walker last night said ‘There is no
such film’ – before putting the
phone down. He refused to respond
to further calls.
The Mail on Sunday has been told
Clarke was involved in a failed
attempt to leak that incident to the
media.
When this newspaper first put the
drugs ‘sting’ to Clarke in September,
he said he had repeatedly raised his
concerns about ‘endemic drug use’
in the party.
He added: ‘Having said that, I have
given no films of drug taking to any
media outlets.’
Clarke said last night he stood by
his earlier statement on the matter.
A FEMALE Tory aide to David
Cameron’s ‘anti porn’ adviser
was forced to quit last night
after claims she had sex with
‘Tory Tatler’ Mark Clarke on
a pub pool table.
India Brummitt, Clarke’s
mistress, is also said to have
suffered a dislocated jaw when
he slapped her during consensual
sex. When Ms Brummitt, 25,
attended hospital for treatment
in the early hours of the
morning, she reportedly told
medics it was a ‘netball injury’.
Ms Brummitt was a Commons
aide to Rail Minister Claire
Perry who is also the Prime
Minister’s adviser on ‘the
sexualisation of children’.
But she was forced to resign
yesterday after The Mail on
Sunday learned of her and
Mr Clarke’s behaviour.
A former girlfriend of Clarke
said he enjoys ‘rough sex’ and
that they had bought a leather
whip from Soho sex shop,
Harmony, which they used in
the bedroom.
He is said have had sex with
Ms Brummitt on the pool table
while he was Parliamentary
candidate for Tooting in South
London. A source said: ‘We were
all absolutely horrified.
‘Mark was known for his
outrageous behaviour but this
was beyond the pale even by his
appalling standards.’
The allegations follow a series
of claims that Clarke abused his
position as a Tory ‘director’ and
head of the Party’s Road Trip
2015 Election campaign to prey
on young female activists and
bully male colleagues.
Clarke declined to comment on
the allegations concerning Ms
Brummitt, who also did not
respond to calls.
Activists who went on Mr
Clarke’s Road Trip visits to key
constituencies said they were
shocked by the way Clarke and
Ms Brummitt openly shared
hotel rooms. On some occasions,
Clarke’s wife Sarah, a senior
NHS administrator, was also on
the trips with their young child.
Clarke, 38, a consultant with
consumer giant Unilever, is said
to have first met Ms Brummitt
when she was a schoolgirl.
There is no suggestion he
started a relationship with her
then. They became boyfriend
and girlfriend before Mr
Clarke’s marriage three years
ago, but friends say they have
remained lovers to this day.
In a separate development, the
mother of Elliott Johnson, the
Tory activist who killed himself
after allegedly being bullied by
Mr Clarke, was taken to hospital
by ambulance on Friday with
severe chest pains.
Medics at Kettering Hospital
diagnosed an irregular
heartbeat and said Alison
Johnson was suffering from
stress. Mrs Johnson and her
husband Ray gave permission
for The Mail on Sunday to
publish details of her illness.
Mr Johnson, from Wisbech,
Cambridgeshire, said: ‘The loss
SCANDAL: India Brummitt at a
party and, below, with Clarke and
former Tory chairman Grant Shapps
of Elliott has made a huge hole
in our lives, but the Tory leaders
who seem unwilling to accept
their responsibility is making
the situation worse. We are
determined to get answers as to
why our beloved son died.’
Their comments were echoed
by former Tory chairman David
Davis who said the Party must not
cover up the scandal – and called
for Edward Legard, the Torysupporting Old Etonian judge
appointed to lead the Party’s
internal inquiry, to be replaced.
‘These allegations are serious
and quite possibly criminal,’
said Mr Davis. ‘The inquiry
should be carried out by
someone external to the Party,
not someone who might be seen
to be too close to the leadership.’
Meanwhile, a blame game
erupted between rival Tory
camps over who was
responsible for the Clarke
scandal: former chairman
Grant Shapps who made Clarke
a Tory ‘director’, current
chairman Lord Feldman who
put him in charge of the road
trip, or David Cameron ‘who
praised him to the hilt’.
Lord Feldman said: ‘I was
wholly unaware of allegations of
bullying and inappropriate
sexual conduct by Mr Clarke
prior to August 2015. Now this
abhorrent behaviour has been
brought to my attention, I will
ensure that every step is taken to
investigate these allegations and
ascertain who is responsible.’
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SuNdAY NEWSPAPER Of THE YEAR
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EXPOSED
DOOMED?
_Masthead_Reversed_Lines
l Tatler Tory scandal forces Minister out...
l ...After we reveal new MP blackmail plot
l PM’s pal in firing line over our revelations
By Simon Walters POLITICAL EDITOR
MINISTER Grant Shapps was forced to
quit over the ‘Tatler Tory’ scandal yesterday amid shocking new claims of blackmail, adultery and political corruption.
He resigned as Overseas Aid Minister after
he was blamed by No 10 for giving a top job in
the Election campaign to Mark Clarke, who
INSIDE: THE MoS AND THE SCANDAL
THAT’S TEARING THE TORIES APART
bullied activist Elliott Johnson, 21, before he
killed himself in September .
Shapps’ exit came as this newspaper alerted
No 10 to accusations that Clarke was trying to
blackmail a female aide to Tory Cabinet
Minister Robert Halfon over an affair with a
married Tory MP.
Clarke had allegedly told the woman to win
OUT: Grant Shapps
quit his Ministerial
post yesterday
AFFAIR: Another MP
caught up in a Mark
Clarke blackmail claim
PRESSURE: Lord
Feldman fights to
remain Tory chairman
Halfon’s backing for his bid to become a Tory
MP or the relationship would be exposed.
Halfon last night confirmed that he backed
Clarke to be put on the list of candidates, as he
had been initially impressed by him and knew
of no blackmail threat. Clarke’s name was
later removed from the list by a senior official
at Conservative Campaign HQ.
The new blackmail claim, which Clarke
1ST
Orkney
TMOS_Masthead_Lines
We break it on Sunday...
Weather
3
TMOS_Masthead_Lines
Shetland
4
6
x
KEY
33
5
x
x
x
x
Wind speed
(mph)
x
x
TMOS_Masthead_Reversed_Small_NoLines
TMOS_Masthead_Small_Reversed_NoCrest_NoLines
x
13
Temperature
Centigrade
8
-3 12
10
11
45
TORY SCANDAL: Our exclusive last week was
picked up everywhere, including in The Times
12
13
32
14
12
13
Channel Islands
UK FORECAST
GENERAL FORECAST
Windy, with the increasing risk of
gales and gusts, especially in
Northern Ireland, southern
Scotland, Wales and northern
England. South-east Britain will
have a fine morning, but elsewhere
there will be wintry showers. The
rain will edge southwards into
southern Britain this afternoon.
REGIONAL FORECASTS
London, South East, South, East
Anglia, Channel Islands: A largely
dry morning with some sunshine.
Clouding over this afternoon, with
spells of rain. Wind W to SW, fresh
to strong. Max 14C 57F.
South West, Wales, Midlands:
Windy. Heavy showers this morning,
especially over Wales. Longer spells
of rain this afternoon. Wind SW,
fresh to strong. Max 13C 55F.
North West, North East:
Increasingly windy. Early showers
will merge into longer spells of
rain. Wintry showers later. Wind
SW, strong. Max 12C 54F.
Scotland: Wintry showers will
merge into longer spells of rain,
sleet and hill snow. Wind SW, fresh
to strong. Max 10C 50F.
Northern Ireland, Eire: Very windy.
Heavy rain will clear to showers.
Wind SW, gales. Max 12C 54F.
WEEK AHEAD
Heavy rain across Ireland, Wales,
southern and western England will
move north-eastwards tomorrow.
Northern Scotland will have wintry
showers. Rain across the UK and
Ireland on Tuesday too. Unsettled
throughout the week.
WEATHER WATCH John Kettley
Delegates from 196 countries head for Paris this week to begin the latest
Climate Change Conference. Severe weather events cannot be directly
linked to global warming; but the likelihood is that they will become more
frequent and more significant in the coming decades.
The long-term expectation of rising temperatures does not rule out
colder periods along the way as we saw in Britain exactly five years ago
when a blanket of snow and severe frosts brought our coldest and most
extreme December weather since 1890. As November ends, temperatures
are still more than 2C above average, which is likely to mark the month as
one of the three mildest Novembers. The coming week is also likely to
continue very mild but with gales and driving rain for many areas.
SIX-DAY FORECAST
LONDON
ABERDEEN
BELFAST
BIRMINGHAM
CANTERBURY
CARDIFF
GLASGOW
LEEDS
MANCHESTER
NEWCASTLE
NORWICH
PLYMOUTH
MON
13
4
8
12
14
13
5
10
11
8
13
12
TUE
14
7
12
14
15
14
10
12
14
12
14
12
WED
15
10
11
13
15
14
9
11
12
13
13
12
THU
10
5
6
9
11
10
6
7
8
7
10
9
SNOW REPORT
Andorra
Austria
Canada/USA
France
Italy
Norway
Switzerland
FRI
9
7
9
9
9
11
8
7
9
8
10
10
SAT
11
9
10
9
10
11
9
7
10
10
11
10
...and rest of Fleet Street
prints it again on Monday
THE Mail on Sunday is proud
to set the news agenda week
in, week out... but even by our
standards, last Sunday’s
edition broke new ground –
as our revelations about the
cinema ban of the Lord’s
➤➤ From Page One
denies as ‘false’, was the last
straw for No 10.
It came amid mounting evidence that senior Conservatives
ignored repeated warnings
about Clarke, as well as powerful new claims by Mr Johnson’s
parents of a Tory cover-up concerning their son’s death.
Downing Street decided someone had to take responsibility
for the scandal – and Shapps,
demoted to a junior minister
after the Election for his gaffes,
was told to fall on his sword.
Earlier this month this newspaper revealed how Halfon told
No 10 he feared he had been the
victim of a separate blackmail
threat by Clarke over his own
affair with another female
Conservative official.
The Tory MP involved in the
new blackmail row with Clarke
threatened to apply for a legal
injunction to prevent this newspaper identifying him for ‘family reasons’ last night. We
agreed not to name him.
This newspaper has also
decided not to identify Halfon’s
female assistant who was in the
affair with the unnamed MP.
The blackmail claim is said to
have been reported to Tory
chairman Lord Feldman by a
former adviser to Cabinet Minister Liz Truss, who is not
involved in any way.
In the run-up to the Election,
there were also rumours that Mr
Shapps was having an extramarital affair, which could have left
him open to blackmail. But he
vehemently denied the claims,
and The Mail on Sunday has no
evidence that they were true.
The departure of Shapps followed growing panic in the Tory
Party as the scandal threatened
to drag in more and more senior
figures. Shapps’ allies claimed
he had been made a ‘scapegoat’
to protect Feldman, a close
Temp C lwr/upr cm
Pas de la Casa
-1
20/40
Obergurgl
-5
5/55
Lake Louise
0
165/170
Whistler
5
80/80 TMOS_Masthead_Reversed_NoLines
Courchevel
-3
34/118
Les Arcs
-5
na/na
Cervinia
-6
20/145
Selva Gardena
-2
0/5
Geilo
5
20/30
Crans Montana
7
na/na TMOS_Masthead_Lines
Cairngorm, Glencoe, Glenshee, Nevis Range,The Lecht all resorts not yet open
HOLY ROW: We broke the story of how cinema chains had banned the advert
for the Lord’s Prayer – and both The Sun and The Times quickly followed it up
HELPLINE
0808 272 0808
Prayer advert, plus the latest
of our ‘Tatler Tory’ sex and
bullying exclusives, dominated
the news pages of all our Fleet
Street rivals.
Our award-winning news and
politics teams consistently
break red-hot stories which
reverberate long after the
weekend... most recently, with
Tony Blair’s apology over the
Iraq War; Thomas Cook’s
‘blood money’ for the deaths
of two children in Corfu;
Blackmail
‘last straw
for No 10’
friend of the Prime Minister.
Shapps was accused of ignoring
a series of warnings that Clarke
– who earned his nickname after
Tatler magazine singled him out
as a future Tory Minister – was
serial sex pest and bully.
As Tory co-chairman with
Feldman before the Election,
Shapps made Clarke a Tory
‘director’, gave him a desk in the
Party’s HQ and backed his ‘Road
Trip 2015’ Election campaign,
which involved busloads of
young activists campaigning in
key constituencies led by married Clarke, 38. But he used the
tour to prey on women, flaunt
his mistress and bully others.
After the Election up to 25
activists complained – and when
Mr Johnson was found dead by
a railway track in Bedfordshire,
the scandal erupted. The Mail
on Sunday was first to report
the matter, and after eight
weeks of silence the rest of
Fleet Street followed.
Asked about the blackmail
attempt last night, Mr Halfon
denied any wrongdoing. His
spokesman said: ‘Robert sent a
reference about Clarke only
because he thought he had done
a good job on the road trips.
‘He was categorically not
aware of any of the allegations
made against him now. Had he
been, he obviously would not
have endorsed him in any way.’
Last week we revealed how
Clarke was accused of trying to
humiliate another male Tory
activist, who was duped into
performing a lewd act on the
internet. The man received a
demand for £2,500 to stop footage being posted on his Facebook page. When the man, one of
those who had complained to
Tory HQ about Clarke, refused,
it was posted. Kent Police are
now investigating.
News of Shapps’ resignation
was broken by the Prime Minister at a dramatic press conference in Malta. Mr Cameron
effectively sacked Shapps after
TATLER TORY SCANDAL:
SPECIAL REPORT PAGES 6,7,8
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James Hewitt selling his love
letters from Princess Diana;
and the revelation two Paris
jihadis were fake refugees.
No wonder our competitors
are queuing up to grab their
copies of The Mail on Sunday!
he was asked if the Minister had
his ‘complete confidence.’ He
pointedly refused to give it and
coldly said a statement ‘would
be released’ soon afterwards.
Mr Cameron was asked by The
Mail on Sunday if he had a message for the Mr Johnson’s parents, Ray and Alison. He said: ‘It
is a tragic loss of a very talented
young life and it is not something that any parent should
have to go through.’
With the scandal edging closer
to the doors of No 10, Mr Cameron rejected the Johnsons’
claim of a cover-up, and tried to
assuage them, saying: ‘It is so
important that there is the
proper independent inquiry.’
Shapps said he was resigning
because the ‘buck stopped with
him’ for giving ‘a second chance’
to Clarke, leading to the ‘widely
reported, very serious allegations’. Shapps continued to maintain his innocence, stating that
‘neither the Party nor I can find
any record of written allegations
of bullying, sexual abuse or
blackmail made to the chairman’s
office prior to the Election.’
But he added that he was quitting because ‘I cannot help but
feel that the steady stream of
those who raised smaller, more
nuanced, objections should
have perhaps set alarm bells
ringing sooner’.
In response, Mr Cameron paid
tribute Mr Shapps’ ‘seemingly
unremitting amount of energy’
and for being a ‘loyal and trusted
supporter of mine’.
Labour were quick to seize the
chance to distract from their own
political problems. Shadow Minister Jonathan Ashworth said:
‘We need to know just how widely
this goes. We need a fully independent inquiry to look at culture
and practices in the Tory Party.’
Nick Hurd, son of former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, is
to replace Shapps as Overseas
Aid Minister.
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Tory sleaze sensation
By SIMON
WALTERS
BRUCE ADAMS
POLITICAL
EDITOR
CONSERVATIVE Party chairman
Lord Feldman was fighting for his
political life last night after Grant
Shapps was forced to resign over
the ‘Tatler Tory’ scandal.
Baroness Emma Pidding was
also in the firing line as pressure
mounted over the party’s failure to control sex pest and
bully Mark Clarke. She has
long been a vocal cheerleader
of the disgraced aide.
Friends of Feldman say he
is terrified the row will
force him to follow Shapps
and quit the Government.
Speaking days before
Shapps’s dramatic exit
as International Development Minister yesterday, the peer told a
close friend: ‘My life
has been a nightmare
in the last two months.’
Feldman’s ‘nightmare’
started on September 15
when Tory activist Elliott
Johnson took his own life
after being bullied by Clarke.
The pressure grew as this
newspaper established that:
l Feldman’s officials launched
an inquiry to find out whether
Baroness Pidding – who is accused
of leaking to Clarke the names of
his accusers – had an improper
relationship with the shamed aide.
l Feldman banned married Clarke
and his mistress, Tory aide India
Brummitt, from an Election night
VIP bash because he was ‘horrified’
BOMBSHELL: Our exclusive last week
by their conduct – but weeks later
still gave Clarke a new top Tory job.
l Mr Johnson sobbed after being
assaulted by Clarke in a pub, and
blamed Feldman for failing to curb
the activist.
l Feldman was surprised by how
many people were caught up in the
scandal, telling one friend: ‘Every
time I open The Mail on Sunday ten
more crawl out of the woodwork’.
Feldman’s hopes of hanging on to
his Cabinet job suffered a blow last
night after allies of Shapps accused
No 10 of ‘throwing him to the dogs to
save the PM’s chum’ – a reference to
Feldman’s close links to Cameron.
They were friends at Oxford and
are tennis partners to this day.
Feldman is Cameron’s chief fundraiser and ‘fixer’, so losing him would
be ‘unthinkable’, in the words of one
member of Cameron’s inner circle.
But that is not how Shapps’s
friends see it. One said: ‘It is pathetic
to try to blame Grant for all this – he
was co-chairman with Feldman
before the Election so Feldman can’t
wash his hands of it. Grant left Conservative Campaign Headquarters
six months ago, for God’s sake. He
has spent most of time since then in
Africa with his ministerial job.
‘In the same period Feldman promoted Clarke to run “Road Trip
2020” and Pidding got a peerage on
the back of it. If anyone should be
punished, it is them.’
Tory activists bullied by Clarke
say they were shocked to be confronted by him hours after giving
evidence to the internal inquiry into
Mr Johnson’s death, having been
assured they would remain anonymous. It led to claims that Baroness
Pidding, a close friend of senior
Tory official Simon Mort, who carried out the inquiry, had leaked their
names to her loyal ally Clarke.
Pidding, former chairman of the
Conservatives National Convention,
was a keen supporter of ‘Road Trip
2015’ and was made chairman of
UNDER
PRESSURE:
Lord Feldman
The Mail on Sunday November 29 • 2015
Now PM’s pal
Feldman is
in the firing
line as Tatler
Tory scandal
engulfs party
our challenge to PM at Malta Summit
MoS: ‘Elliott Johnson’s parents say they
hold the Conservative Party responsible
for their son’s suicide. What is your
message to Mr Johnson’s parents?’
TOGETHER: Mark Clarke with David Cameron
‘Road Trip 2020’ under Clarke. Her
support for Clarke helped secure Mr
Cameron’s public show of support
for him in July. And her work on the
campaign helped Pidding obtain a
peerage only weeks ago.
The Mail on Sunday has learned
that Lord Feldman was told of
rumours that Pidding had become
too close to Clarke. Such was the
concern in Tory HQ that Feldman
asked officials to ask key senior
Conservatives: ‘What is the nature
of Baroness Pidding’s relationship
with Mark Clarke?’
In a statement to The Mail on Sunday yesterday, Baroness Pidding
vehemently denied having had an an
improper relationship with Clarke.
The Mail on Sunday has no evidence
of any such improper relationship.
She also denied leaking the names of
his accusers. She said: ‘In 30 years as
a volunteer for the Conservative
Party I have never done anything
blameworthy or underhand. My work
PM: ‘It is a tragic loss of a very talented
young life and not something any parent
should have to go through, and I feel for
them deeply... The Conservative Party must
ensure there is a proper investigation’
with Road Trip 2015 alongside Mark
Clarke was purely to improve the
party’s electoral prospects. I neither
witnessed nor was alerted to any
behaviour that might have suggested
anything untoward or unwelcome to
do with Mr Clarke or anyone else.
‘I have never been told by Conservative Campaign Headquarters the
specific nature of complaints made
‘Why won’t Feldman
protect us from Clarke?’
against Mr Clarke, nor the identity
of the people making them. Beyond
that, I cannot comment further.’
However, there is clear evidence
that Feldman did not share Pidding’s
admiration for Clarke – and that
Pidding was aware of his views.
This newspaper has been told of
an extraordinary incident on Election night in May as Feldman hosted
a champagne victory party in the
early hours of the morning for
donors and other leading figures.
The event was VIPs only, and entry
was restricted to those with a
special wristband.
Pidding has told friends how she
went to join the bash with Clarke
and his mistress India Brummitt
who was a Commons aide to Tory
Minister Clarie Perry.
Clarke had flaunted his mistress
on ‘Road Trips’ and shared hotel
rooms with her on official overnight
stays to the horror of MPs. Tongues
were already wagging at Tory HQ,
and Feldman knew it, if not Pidding.
A source said: ‘Pidding said to
Feldman, “I love my friends Mark
and India, they’d love to come to the
party and need wristbands.” ’
But Feldman chose to ignore it –
Clarke, 38, and Brummitt, 25, were
effectively barred. Moreover, Feld-
BULLY: Clarke, left, with Mr Johnson
man’s attempt to place the blame for
the scandal on Shapps’ shoulders
appears to be contradicted by new
evidence of the view of Mr Johnson
himself. A friend said the young
activist referred to Feldman by name
after Clarke bullied him in Westminster’s Marquis of Granby pub.
In the August 12 incident, Clarke
physically pinned him in his chair in
front of dozens of shocked activists.
After a friend rescued him, a sobbing Johnson cried out: ‘I want to
talk to Feldman. Why isn’t he protecting us from Mark Clarke?’
The incident led to several Conservatives complaining directly to
Feldman’s office.
The Tory chairman launched an
inquiry, but it was too late. After
further bullying by Clarke – amid
claims that he had been tipped off
by a Tory HQ ‘mole’ about who was
making the complaints – 21-year-old
Mr Johnson took his own life on a
railway line in Bedfordshire.
November 29 • 2015 The Mail on Sunday
Clarke
bragged:
whips are
‘clueless’
By Simon Walters
IN IT TOGETHER: From left:
Lord Feldman, Baroness
Pidding, Grant Shapps and
Mark Clarke with the Road
Trip 2015 battlebus
VICTIM: Elliott Johnson behind Shapps at the 2014 Tory Conference
OUTRAGEOUS: Mark Clarke indulges in some typically sleazy behaviour
How dare you bring your mistress!
A SENIOR Tory activist publicly
bawled out Mark Clarke for holding
hands with his mistress in church
at the wedding of an adviser to
Treasury Minister Greg Hands.
Shocked guests looked on as
Victoria Brocklebank-Fowler, an exConservative councillor, marched
up to Clarke and mistress India
Brummitt and told him: ‘You are an
absolute disgrace. You should be at
home with your wife and children.’
The incident happened at the
recent wedding in Fulham, West
London, of Greg Smith, leader of
Hammersmith Tories, to his bride
By Simon Walters
Annalise. Mr Smith is
an adviser to local
Conservative MP
Mr Hands, a Cabinet
Minister and one of
Chancellor George
Osborne’s allies.
Clarke, a friend of
both Smith and Hands,
turned up with Ms
Brummitt and his Tory
henchman Andre Walker who
helped Clarke bully Tory suicide
AFFAIR: India Brummitt
victim Elliott
Johnson. In the
wedding photos,
Clarke and Walker,
who was master of
ceremonies, are
pictured alongside
Clarke’s close friend,
the former Tory
MP Aidan Burley,
who was forced to quit
politics after attending
a Nazi-themed stag party.
Mrs Brocklebank-Fowler
confronted Clarke and Brummitt as
guests discussed their indignation
at seeing the couple hold hands
during the church ceremony.
On hearing that Clarke’s wife
Sarah, whom he married in 2012,
and their two young children,
were at his nearby home, Mrs
Brocklebank-Fowler stormed up to
Clarke and said: ‘Your behaviour is
utterly appalling. You should both
be ashamed.’ A fellow guest said:
‘Victoria was magnificent and gave
them both barrels. She spoke for
all of us but it was water off a
duck’s back to Mark.’
NOTHING sums up the Tory high
command’s abject failure to rein in
Mark Clarke than his showdown
with two party heavyweights more
than five years ago.
Conservative HQ was alarmed by
reports that Clarke had got involved
in a series of nasty incidents in
Tooting, South London, where he
was standing as parliamentary
candidate against Labour’s Sadiq
Khan in 2010.
Tory Chief Whip Patrick McLoughlin and party chairman Eric Pickles
summoned Clarke, then barely 30
years old, for a dressing-down in
McLoughlin’s Commons office.
It ended with Clarke running rings
round them as the candidate
exploited a mix-up over the date of
one alleged fracas, letting him off
the hook.
Clarke told them he was in church
on the day in question – and later
boasted to friends how he made
mincemeat of ‘clueless’ McLoughlin
and Pickles.
Clarke’s ability to escape scot-free
is all the more surprising in view of
the two men tasked with taking him
down a peg.
Former miner McLoughlin is
renowned for his no-nonsense
approach to taming Tory troublemakers, and larger-than-life Yorkshireman Pickles does not suffer
fools gladly.
Nor was Clarke intimidated by
the Chief Whips’ office, where
countless MPs caught misbehaving
have been subjected to humiliating
dressing-downs.
McLoughlin told him: ‘We have
asked you here because we have
heard very negative reports about
you from your local constituency.
You need to know we cannot tolerate
this behaviour.’
Clarke: ‘What reports?’
Pickles: ‘I’ll lay it on the line, lad.
They say you’re bone idle, you can’t
be bothered to go campaigning on
doorsteps, you’re more interested in
appearing in gossip columns than on
doorsteps, are downright rude to
people, you drink too much and you
have a poisonous relationship with
your local association.’
Clarke: ‘They are all lying to you.’
McLoughlin: ‘We have heard
these reports from several different people.’
Clarke: ‘I’m telling you, they’re
all lying to you.’
Pickles: ‘They can’t all be wrong.’
When McLoughlin and Pickles
Bully boy with a ‘First Mother’ complex
OF ALL the many women in Mark
Clarke’s life, none is more important than his mother, Dr Madeleine
Clarke, a therapist and psychologist with her own private practice.
The 38-year-old aide is accused of
assaulting, threatening and blackmailing his many lovers, but he
holds ‘The First Mother’, as he calls
her in mock adoration, in awe.
A former girlfriend said: ‘Mark
has a fixation with his mother and
she worships him. She is forever
telling him he is the most wonderful man in the world.
‘Anything she says goes. She is
the only person he is frightened of.
She religiously keeps all his press
By Simon Walters
cuttings. I believe that is where
many of his problems come from.’
By contrast, Clarke had such a
low regard for his father, accountant Dennis Ogden, that he changed
his surname by deed poll from
Ogden to Clarke after his parents
split up when he was a young man.
A male friend of Clarke said:
‘Mark told me he couldn’t stand his
father. He claimed he had left
him on a bus once when he was a
baby and said his father was virtually an alcoholic.’
Elegant Madeleine’s Barbadian
roots can be seen in her son’s matinee idol looks.
Her father Carlos ‘Bertie’ Clarke,
was a West Indian Test cricketer
who came to the UK in the 1940s,
became a GP in Pimlico and was
awarded the OBE in 1983.
Until he was seven, Clarke lived
with his mother on the Ivybridge
council estate in Hounslow, West
London. Despite his impressive
family pedigree, he made the
most of his humble background to
promote his political ambition,
portraying himself as a John
Major-style ‘working-class’ Tory.
In 2007, he said: ‘My family is a
very working-class family. Every-
one was born in a council house,
and after working hard all their
life everyone died poor in that
same council house.’
It is hardly surprising it was not
a portrait that ‘Tatler Tory’ Clarke’s
friends were familiar with.
They knew him as the wellspoken and ambitious boy who won
a scholarship to Dulwich College,
where fees currently cost nearly
£20,000 a year, and whose former
pupils include PG Wodehouse,
Nigel Farage and 12 Years A Slaveactor Chiwetel Ejiofor.
It was at Dulwich that Clarke’s
PROUD:
Madeleine
with husband
Patrick
Tory sleaze sensation
‘The twits
messed up’
➤➤ From Page 7
referred to a specific incident,
Clarke demanded that they provide
the date. The Tory grandees fell
straight into his trap by tentatively
producing one.
A triumphant Clarke declared:
‘According to my diary, that is a
Sunday gentlemen. I couldn’t have
been there.’
McLoughlin: ‘Why?’
Clarke: ‘I was at church.’
A dumbfounded Pickles spluttered: ‘You? At church? What were
you doing there, lad?’
A beaming Clarke said: ‘Making
myself a better man.’
When McLoughlin and Pickles
maintained they did not believe him,
Clarke said: ‘I can produce 50 people
who will testify that I was there.’
After getting away scot-free in
the farcical confrontation, Clarke
couldn’t wait to tell his friends.
One said: ‘He said they made a
total mess of it. He thought it was
hilarious and said they were a
couple of clueless twits.’
FOES: Clarke
outwitted
Pickles, left,
and McLoughlin
➤➤ From Page 7
Right-wing political views were
forged. Curiously, for someone
with Caribbean blood, he became
a fan of former Tory MP Enoch
Powell, best known for his
explosive ‘rivers of blood’ speech
in the 1960s warning of the
dangers of immigration.
A confidant of Clarke said:
‘I thought his love of Enoch odd
considering his West Indian
background but he never made a
big deal out of that.
‘He often jokes, “I’m only black
below the waist.” ’
His mother was on a similarly
upwardly mobile path as she
became a highly successful
therapist with celebrity clients
and her own practice in Chelsea.
She once treated Rupert Young,
twin brother of singer Will Young,
after he self-harmed and twice
tried to commit suicide.
Dr Clarke lives close to her son
in a £1.5 million house with her
husband, hypnotherapist Patrick
Bellville, a socialite whose former
wife Lucinda Wallop is the
daughter of Viscount Lymington
and sister to the 10th Earl
of Portsmouth, one of the
richest aristocratic landowners
in Hampshire.
Clarke’s Tory victims talk of his
‘mesmeric’ power to charm and
manipulate others for his own
twisted ends. It is as though he
has inverted the psychological
methods used by his mother’s
profession to mend shattered
lives to do precisely the
opposite to his Conservative
activist victims.
Whereas a therapist
identifies weakness and
strengthens it, Clarke
homes in on it and
ruthlessly exploits it.
He has told friends he had
The Mail on Sunday November 29 • 2015
A ruthless
charmer
who preys
on victims’
weak spots
seen the terrible toll drink took on
his father. Yet Clarke boasts of
how he uses alcohol to lure
women, his ‘IIP’ technique as he
abhorrently and cockily calls it:
‘Isolate, inebriate and penetrate.’
It is hard not to ponder what
a therapist would make of it,
especially with a parental lineage
such as Clarke’s.
After studying history at
Durham University, Clarke was
the party’s candidate for Tooting,
the South London suburb where he
now lives, by the time he was 30.
His path to the Cabinet looked
clear. Then he lost in disgrace
at the 2010 Election after his
girlfriend, a local nurse, accused
him of ‘appalling’ behaviour
towards her. She said he told her
he once slept with a friend’s
girlfriend to get revenge on him.
The warning lights continued to
flash: after the 2010 Election,
Tory chairman Baroness Warsi
refused to put him back on the
candidates list. Clarke responded
with one of his favourite ploys:
smears. He launched a vicious
and cowardly social media
vendetta against her, petulantly
telling friends that Muslim Warsi
was a ‘closet Communist and
terrorist sympathiser’.
His reaction in recent months
as victims finally summoned up
the courage to expose him
provides another telling
psychological case book.
Like a cornered beast he
launched a frenzy of attacks on
them in a doomed attempt to
muzzle them all. When one, Elliott
Johnson, killed himself, the Party
could sweep the ‘Tatler Tory’
GETAWAY:
Mark Clarke
and wife Sarah
in Barbados
last week
GEMAIRA / SPLASHNEWS
scandal under the carpet no
longer. Exposed to the world as
a bully, blackmailer and worse,
master manipulator Clarke
tried to play the victim himself,
claiming he was being targeted
for trying to expose ‘endemic
drug taking’ in the Party.
When this newspaper put a
dozen allegations to him last
week, including a brief and
polite query as to whether he
had gone to Barbados, he played
the race card.
He said: ‘I am with my black
West Indian mother visiting my
black West Indian family. I can’t
control my ethnicity, I was born
with it. There’s a word for people
who run stories about people
based on their ethnicity.’
His mind games never sounded
so feeble or transparent.
S1
18
Tatler Tory’s
sick taunts
over suicide
victim at
‘Sopranos’
Crabshack
ambush
TATLER TORY
SCANDAL
TEARING THE
PARTY APART
TMOS_Masthead_Lines
By Simon Walters
POLITICAL EDITOR
DISGRACED ‘Tatler Tory’ Mark
Clarke mocked suicide victim
Elliott Johnson in a terrifying
ambush of one of the tragic activist’s friends last week.
In an intimidating encounter
likened to a scene from TV mafia
show The Sopranos, Clarke, aided
by two burly henchmen and his
mistress, cornered their victim,
another Conservative campaigner, in a Chelsea restaurant.
They had tricked Patrick Sullivan into the showdown, and spent
an intense 90 minutes trying to
strongarm him into withdrawing
claims that he, too, had been bullied by Clarke.
At one point the shamed aide
appeared to mock Mr Johnson,
who was found dead on railway
tracks in Bedfordshire in September after Clarke had subjected him to a campaign of
intimidation. Trying to portray
himself as a ‘victim’ after being
banned from the Tories following
allegations of blackmail, sexual
assault and revenge pornography, Clarke said: ‘If I laid across
a railway track I’d be a hero.’
The comment was last night
blasted as ‘sick and despicable’ by
Mr Johnson’s father Ray. It came
after Clarke, his acolytes Andre
Walker and Will Hanley, and mistress India Brummitt duped Mr
Sullivan into meeting them at the
Big Easy Bar-B-Q & Crabshack on
the Kings Road on Monday.
In a darkened corner, they subjected him to a ‘kangaroo court’
during which they are believed
to have used a secret tape
recorder to try to trick him into
retracting claims that he had
been bullied by Clarke, who
earned his ‘Tatler Tory’ nickname
after being tipped as a future
Tory Minister by the magazine.
Sullivan, one of the last people
to see 21-year-old Mr Johnson
alive, evaded the ‘verbal traps’
by tricking Clarke into thinking
he was getting drunk.
The astonishing incident came
48 hours after the scandal forced
Clarke’s ally, Grant Shapps, to quit
as International Development
Minister. There is now mounting
pressure for Party chairman Lord
Feldman to stand down too.
Mr Sullivan, 30, told The Mail
on Sunday: ‘It was like a scene
The Mail on Sunday DECEMBER 6 • 2015
from The Sopranos. They ambushed
me and tried to fool me into saying
Clarke was not a bully.
‘I played dumb and made them
think I was drinking heavily like
them – in fact I had told the waitress
to make my cocktails non-alcoholic.’
Sullivan says that while Clarke
threatened him, Ms Brummitt revelled in her lover’s notoriety. ‘She
said she was keeping a record of all
the times he was in the papers. They
were like gangsters, him intimidating me while his moll befriended
me, backed up by nasty sidekicks.’
However, Clarke last night vehemently denied this version of events,
telling The Mail on Sunday: ‘Your
story is false and defamatory from
start to finish. I have three witnesses who will corroborate this.’
According to Sullivan, the crony
who plotted the ambush, Will Hanley,
Commons aide to Tory MP Nigel
Adams, knew he was on anti-depressants as a result of his shock at the
death of his friend. Sullivan is also
furious at the role played by Andre
Walker, ex-aide to MP David Morris,
who was caught bullying Mr Johnson
with Clarke before his suicide.
‘When Elliott died he left a note
saying he had been bullied by Clarke
and betrayed by Walker. The same
happened to me, except I was
betrayed by Hanley too,’ said Sullivan. ‘I thought Hanley was a pal.’
Fellow Tory activist Steven
George-Hilley said last night: ‘It beggars belief that Clarke is still behaving like this. I congratulate Patrick
for having the guts to defy him.’
Elliott Johnson’s father Ray echoed the sentiment saying: ‘I hope
brave Mr Sullivan will inspire other
victims to come forward.’
It is not the first time Hanley and
Walker have been accused of being
involved in Clarke’s dirty work. It
was at a party Hanley’s house in
Hurlingham Road, Fulham, that one
of Clarke’s female victims was allegedly subjected to a ‘sting’ to try to
catch her snorting cocaine on film.
In 2010, the Daily Mirror published
a photograph purporting to be Mr
Hanley snorting the banned drug,
DEFIANT: Patrick
Sullivan at the crab
restaurant where he was
cornered. Below: How
we led the reporting of
the scandal last week
Meow Meow at the Tory conference.
Clarke first targeted Sullivan, who
runs the Tory think-tank Parliament
Street, after he helped another bullying victim, Sarah-Jane Sewell in
January. Soon afterwards, Clarke
confronted Sullivan in the Kosmopol
Bar in Chelsea. ‘He shouted at me,
“You’re dead, my real friends would
take a bullet for me – you wouldn’t.”,
Sullivan says. ‘He said he’d destroy
me – just as he did to Elliott.’
Sullivan’s anguish intensified after
the death of Mr Johnson on September 15. The night before they had
both been at a Parliament Street
event at the Commons and afterwards both went for a drink and a
meal at Westminster’s Red Lion pub.
ISABEL INFANTES
Lady Road Trip: ‘Crazy Clarke deserves
UNITED FRONT: Emma Pidding and
Mark Clarke at the 2014 Tory conference
THE Tory peer ennobled
for backing Mark Clarke’s
‘Road Trip’ promised to
help secure him a safe
Parliamentary seat, it was
claimed last night.
Baroness Emma Pidding
told Tory activists they all
‘loved crazy’ Clarke,
showering praise on his
mistress and another lover
at a post-Election event.
The revelation came as
allies of Grant Shapps,
who was forced to quit as a
Government Minister for
giving Clarke too much
power at Tory HQ,
attacked Pidding, Cabinet
Minister Robert Halfon
and Tory chairman Lord
Feldman. ‘They are far
more culpable than Grant
who has been made a
scapegoat,’ said one MP.
One MP said Feldman
had survived because he
was a friend of David
Cameron’s, and Halfon had
emerged unscathed as he
was close to George
Osborne. ‘It was Grant’s
bad luck that he had no one
in Downing Street who
would lift a finger to
defend him,’ said the MP.
Pressure mounted on
Baroness Pidding last
night after fresh
disclosures about her close
links to Clarke.
A confidante of the
peeress told this
newspaper: ‘Emma told me
that she told Mark on
Election night that he
deserved to be given a safe
seat at the next Election
and she would do all she
could to get it for him.’
The Mail on Sunday has
obtained a tape recording
of a ‘Road Trip’ rally in
July in London on the
Hispaniola, a floating
restaurant on the Thames
at Westminster, attended
by Pidding, Clarke and
Halfon.
There Pidding said: ‘I
want to pay tribute to
Mark Clarke. We all
thought he was a bit crazy
but we love him so much.’
And she praised married
Clarke’s mistress, India
Brummitt, whom he
flaunted on the ‘Road Trip’
that visited marginal
constituencies before he
Election, and another of
his activist lovers, Ellie
Vesey-Thompson. Pidding
said: ‘Mark only looks this
good because of the work
that they’ve put in.’
Both lovers worked for
Tory MP Claire Perry,
David Cameron’s adviser
on combating ‘the
sexualisation of children’.
This newspaper revealed
last week how a former
female employee of Mr
Halfon had an affair with
S1
19
The cronies
linked by
Freemasons
IAN MCILGORM
DECEMBER 6 • 2015 The Mail on Sunday
ACCUSED: Clarke’s ‘moll’ India
Brummitt and, below, henchman
Will Hanley, who tricked Sullivan
left, into a meeting.
‘THREATS’:
Clarke, far
left, with
Andre Walker.
Right: Bullying
victim Elliott
Johnson who
committed suicide
After learning that his friend had
killed himself the next day, Mr Sullivan was racked with grief. ‘It brought
back what Clarke did to me,’ he says.
‘I was put on anti-depressants.’
As the extent of Clarke’s bullying
emerged, Mr Sullivan was named
in the press as being one of the
accusers. Clarke struck back at
9.30pm on Monday.
Sullivan had arranged to meet
Hanley – who he had considered a
friend – alone at the Crabshack.
‘A car pulled up and Will got out,
followed by Mark, Andre and India.
Mark said, “How are you when you
aren’t screwing me in the press?”
‘I couldn’t believe Will had tricked
me. I thought about doing a runner
but had nothing to be ashamed of so
I joined them inside. Mark had a
table in a dark corner.
‘He put a computer on the table at
an angle and his phone too. It was
obvious he was recording me – he
talked conspicuously loudly and
directly at his equipment. He wanted
to get me to say he hadn’t bullied me.
I was so nervous, I didn’t even unbutton my jacket. They were all drinking alcohol and they thought I was
too. But I knew I had to keep calm. I
gave a series of mumbled replies.
‘He talked like an amateur hoodlum saying, “It would be awful for
me to break bread with you if you
have betrayed me behind my back.
I’ve never bullied you, have I?”
a safe seat’
another Tory MP, sparking
an alleged blackmail bid by
Clarke because he wanted
Mr Halfon to support his
bid to become a candidate.
In his speech on the
Hispaniola, Mr Halfon
praised ‘incredible’ Clarke
before adding lightheartedly: ‘I also want to
talk about romance...’
He referred to a woman
who worked in his office
who had fallen in love with
a male Tory campaigner on
‘Road Trip.’ At the time Mr
Halfon had just ended an
affair with another woman
on the project – but it was
not disclosed until last
month by this newspaper.
Baroness Pidding said
last night she had backed
Clarke to go back on the
candidates’ list – but at the
time was unaware of
allegations against him.
‘On no occasion did she
promise or even hint she
would ensure him a safe
seat,’ added a spokesman.
Clarke, a consultant with
Unilever, denies any
wrongdoing.
They thought I was the weak link
but I outfoxed them.’ ’
Mr Sullivan says that by about
11pm, Clarke’s smiles turned to
scowls, apparently irked by his ‘victim’s’ refusal to buckle under pressure. ‘As he left, he even gave me a
gangster style hug: he reached one
hand towards mine to shake and put
the other round my shoulder. They
do that in movies – and then shoot
them,’ said Mr Sullivan.
And to add insult to injury, Clarke
and his cohorts tried to get Mr Sullivan to pick up the £300 bill.
‘He wanted me to say he was innocent, but I didn’t. I only wish I had
spoken out about Mark Clarke much
sooner.’
THE ‘Tatler Tory’ scandal took a
new turn last night after it
emerged that Mark Clarke and
his cronies are Freemasons.
They are members of the
Phoenix Lodge, based in
Wandsworth, South London,
where Clarke lives – and meet
there to hatch political plots.
One of Clarke’s fellow Phoenix
Freemasons is lawyer and
Conservative councillor Andy
Peterkin. Mr Peterkin formerly
worked for Clifford Chance, the
London law firm chosen by Tory
chairman Lord Feldman to
conduct an independent inquiry
into the Clarke scandal, and now
works for Farrar and Co, the
Queen’s lawyers.
When the bullying claims
against Clarke surfaced, Mr
Peterkin leapt to his defence on
Facebook saying: ‘Mark Clarke
is one of my best mates. Feel
free to unfriend me if that
offends you.’ He has since
deleted it.
Mr Peterkin told The Mail on
Sunday. ‘I have given Mark a
shoulder to cry on but I am not
giving him legal or any other
advice. I am sick and tired of
seeing him kicked to death
in public.’
Other Phoenix
Freemasons include
Clarke’s henchman Andre
Walker. Walker helped
Clarke bully Elliott
Johnson, before the
activist took his own
life. He also tried to trap
one of Clarke’s female
Tory foes into being
caught on camera snorting
cocaine.
Ukip general
secretary Matthew
Richardson,
another close
friend of
Clarke’s, is a
former
Worshipful
Master of
Phoenix Lodge.
As an Oxford
student, Mr
Richardson set
up an online
forum where
people could post
gossip
RITUALS:
Andy Peterkin in
Freemason regalia
By Simon Walters
POLITICAL EDITOR
anonymously– until it was shut
down amid legal threats.
Clarke ally Greg Smith, an
aide to Cabinet Minister Greg
Hands, is also a former Phoenix
Worshipful Master. It was at
Smith’s summer wedding that
Clarke caused outrage by
holding hands with Ms
Brummitt in church. A guest
bawled out Clarke, saying he
should be at home with his wife
and children.
Fellow Phoenix Freemason
Donal Blaney runs the
Thatcherite Conservative Way
Forward, where Mr Johnson
worked. He was one of Clarke’s
closest friends – until he
disowned him as a ‘narcissistic
sociopath’ after a recent fall-out.
Renowned for its secret
handshakes and bizarre rituals,
Freemasonry has long been
suspected of having members in
high places in the judiciary and
the police, although in recent
years the organisation has tried
to shrug off its reputation for
conspiracies and the dark arts.
Freemasons are traditionally
obliged to swear an oath,
blindfolded, bare-chested, with
a noose around their neck and a
dagger placed to their heart,
and to never reveal the hidden
mysteries of the
organisation.
Masonic rules say
members – of which there
are around 250,000 in
England and Wales – must
keep each others’ lawful
secrets, which has
led to fears that it
fosters corrupt
cliques.
But Freemasons’
leaders say
alleged historic
links with
political and
criminal
conspiracies are
a myth and in
2012 launched
an exercise
promising
greater
openness. Prince
Edward is Grand
Master of the
United Grand
Lodge of England.
At last, a Tory stands up to bully
IF HE were alive today, Elliott Johnson
would be proud of his friend and fellow
passionate Conservative Patrick
Sullivan.
As with Elliott, Mark Clarke bullied
and abused him in a bar out of spite.
As with Elliott, when Mr Sullivan stood
up for himself, Clarke bullied him again
in another bar.
As with Elliott, cowardly Clarke used a
thug who had befriended Mr Sullivan,
only for the friend to betray him when he
needed him.
But that is where Elliott’s story and Mr
Sullivan’s story part.
Elliott, 21, fresh out of university and
new to London, was too frightened to
speak out. Convinced he had been aban-
COMMENT
By SIMON
WALTERS
doned by everyone, he killed himself on
a railway track in Bedfordshire.
Mr Sullivan nearly went the same way.
But he didn’t.
Perhaps it was the added maturity that
comes with being nearly ten years older
than Elliott; perhaps it was the outrageous way that he was ambushed by
Clarke on Monday. Perhaps it was his
burning indignation at the wrongs done
to his tormented friend.
Whatever it was, Mr Sullivan decided
to stay silent no more.
Like Elliott – though unlike Clarke and
his burly accomplices Andre Walker and
Will Hanley – mild-mannered Mr Sullivan is some way short of six feet tall.
Which makes his action in revealing
how Clarke and his Tory mobsters
tried to browbeat him into retracting his
claim that he had been bullied all the
more courageous.
If the Tory party had shown the same
bravery as Mr Sullivan in confronting
bullies, perhaps Elliott would be
alive today.
TMOS_Masthead_Lines
S1
16
TATLER TORY
SCANDAL
TEARING THE
PARTY APART
By Simon Walters
POLITICAL EDITOR
THE ‘Tatler Tory’ scandal took a
new twist last night after the parents of the bullied Conservative
activist who killed himself vowed to
boycott the party’s ‘biased’ official
inquiry into the affair.
The move by Ray and Alison Johnson, whose son Elliott committed
suicide in September, is a major
blow to Tory chairman Lord Feldman’s hopes of avoiding the sack
over the matter.
The Johnsons said they did not
trust David Cameron’s claim that
the inquiry by the lawyers chosen
by the Tories to investigate their
son’s death was ‘independent and
transparent’.
As a result the family will refuse
to give evidence – and they appealed
to other activists bullied by Mark
Clarke to give evidence to the Johnsons’ lawyers instead.
The devastating setback to embattled Lord Feldman came as it
emerged the peer WAS warned of
Clarke’s ‘rude, lazy and aggressive’
streak when he was put in charge of
the Party’s ‘Road Trip’ Election campaign in 2014. Feldman’s fellow
Tory, co-chairman Grant Shapps,
Feldman under
fire as bereaved
parents boycott
Tatler Tory probe
SUICIDE BOY’S FAMILY: INQUIRY ISN’T ‘INDEPENDENT OR TRANSPARENT’
We have been asking you about the
links between Clifford Chance and
the Conservative Party... For all you
have told us the Prime Minister could
be a client and Lord Feldman good
friends with senior partners at Clifford
Chance. This lack of independence
and transparency is a great pity for
our clients who very much hoped
for a reliable inquiry
Tatler Tory’s sick
taunts over suicide
victim at ‘Sopranos’
Crabshack ambush
EXCLUSIVE: Our report last week
read out to Feldman a damning confidential report on Clarke – and
Feldman supported the decision to
make Clarke ‘Road Trip’ director.
It conflicts with Feldman’s persistent claims that he was ‘wholly unaware’ of Clarke’s bullying until four
months ago.
Two weeks ago Shapps was forced
to resign as a Minister over the scandal – prompting claims that he was
‘scapegoated’ to save Feldman, a
close friend of the Prime Minister.
Businessman Mr Johnson told
The Mail on Sunday: ‘We have never
accepted Lord Feldman’s position
that he was “wholly unaware” of
Clarke’s behaviour until August – not
unless he was deaf, dumb and blind.
‘We believe Feldman and other
senior officials were fully aware of
Clarke’s past, but were prepared to
The Mail on Sunday DECEMBER 13 • 2015
LETTER FROM THE JOHNSONS’
SOLICITORS TO THE TORY PARTY
‘LACK OF TRUST’: Alison and Ray Johnson refuse to give evidence
allow him to direct the party’s campaign and risk the safety of young
activists used as mere fodder to
achieve electoral success.
‘As each day passes we believe it
becomes clearer that Tory HQ is
complicit in a cover-up to protect its
chairman, regardless of the damage
it has caused to its youth wing. The
party has cleansed its youth wing –
the question is now who will move to
cleanse Tory HQ itself?’
Mr Johnson said he and his wife
had decided to boycott the inquiry
by Clifford Chance after the law
firm had failed to give a satisfactory
response to ‘basic questions’ – in
particular its long-standing links
with Tory HQ. The Johnsons’ lawyer
wrote to Clifford Chance yesterday:
‘For all you have told us the Prime
Minister could be a client and Lord
Feldman good friends with senior
partners of Clifford Chance.’
He took particular exception to the
way the law firm had asked him and
his wife to give evidence to the
inquiry separately – ‘as though they
are trying to catch us out’.
The family wanted nothing to do
with the ‘so-called independent
inquiry’, he added.
The Tories had framed the ‘terms
of reference’, while witnesses could
be ‘questioned in a manner favourable to the Conservative Party, preventing them giving full and frank
answers’ through fears that it would
be leaked to party chiefs.
‘We are concerned that the hands
of Tory HQ will be pulling the
strings from behind the scenes as
their actions to date show that they
are more interested in protecting
the party machine and its staff than
BULLIED: Elliott Johnson
killed himself in September
in natural justice for Elliott and
other young activists.’
The Johnsons urged activists –
including women who claim they
were sexually abused by Clarke – to
contact the Johnsons’ solicitor
‘where they will be at liberty to provide their testimony anonymously
and without risk of leak’.
The family’s lawyer, Jane
Deighton, of Deighton Pierce Glynn
Solicitors, told Clifford Chance its
‘refusal’ to spell out its Tory links
suggested the investigation was
‘neither independent nor transpar-
Clarke allies ‘smeared
TOP JOBS: From left: Heslop, Semple, Baroness Pidding and David Cameron
SUPPORTERS of Mark Clarke
spread false rumours that a senior
Conservative was a paedophile to
help one of his allies win the second
most powerful job in the party.
Ex-Tory president Charles Heslop
broke down in tears after losing out
as the party’s National Convention
chairman to Rob Semple in July.
Mr Heslop’s supporters claim
that the vote was ‘rigged’ after
Clarke’s allies ran a dirty tricks
campaign against him and bullied
activists into voting for Mr Semple.
Mr Semple was strongly backed
by outgoing National Convention
chairman Baroness Pidding, who
championed Clarke’s controversial
By Simon Walters
‘Road Trip’ campaign, where young
activists were allegedly sexually
abused and bullied by Clarke.
A source close to Mr Heslop, a
businessman and amateur actor
who is openly gay, said: ‘Clarke’s
supporters spread vile and totally
baseless rumours about him and
young boys, that he was “anti
women”, and it would all come out
and damage the party if he won.
‘Charles was so hurt he collapsed
in tears when the result was
announced. At the same event he
had to sit and watch as David
Cameron lauded Clarke publicly –
when Charles knew what Clarke
had done to him. It was disgusting.’
One activist told The Mail on
Sunday that Clarke’s henchman,
Andre Walker, smeared Mr Heslop:
‘Andre knew I was backing Charles
and said to me, “I’ve been checking
stories about Charles and young
boys…” It was disgraceful.’
Walker helped Clarke bully Tory
suicide victim Elliott Johnson.
The National Convention
chairman is head of the
Conservative Party’s voluntary
wing, and effectively its second
most powerful figure, with a say
over Parliamentary candidates.
S1
DECEMBER 13 • 2015 The Mail on Sunday
17
Tears of wife humiliated
by ‘deceitful womaniser’
STORM: Clarke and wife Sarah in
Barbados earlier this year. Right: India
Brummitt on the Election campaign trail
ent – it is simply not enough. Accordingly Mr and Mrs Johnson will
neither support nor take part,’ she
wrote. ‘This is a great pity for our
clients, who very much hoped for a
reliable investigation.’
The Johnsons have urged Clifford
Chance to inform activists to contact them so they can give evidence
to the Johnsons’ lawyers instead.
‘Mr and Mrs Johnson would like
them to speak to us,’ said Ms
Deighton. ‘Please do so.’
The Johnsons’ doubts were echoed
last night by Edward McMillan-
Scott, a former Euro MP who left
the Conservatives after a dispute in
2009. Mr McMillan-Scott said when
he used the Freedom of Information
Act in an attempt to obtain documents from the Tories relating to
the fall-out from his case, they were
censored by Clifford Chance.
‘Crucial sections were redacted by
Clifford Chance to such an extent
that I had no faith in their impartiality,’ said Mr McMillan-Scott. ‘My fear
is that they will behave in a similar
way with the Johnsons.’ Mr McMillan-Scott has written to Lord Pannick,
the crossbench peer chosen by the
Tories to monitor the Clifford Chance
inquiry, to raise his concerns.
The warning to Feldman about
Clarke’s ‘aggressive streak’ was
made by Mr Shapps in the summer of
2014 when party chiefs discussed
whether to back his ‘Road Trip’.
At a meeting with Feldman and
Tory strategists Lynton Crosby and
Stephen Gilbert, Shapps said an
internal ‘candidates report’ on
Clarke showed he was ‘arrogant,
rude, lazy and aggressive’ and ‘the
kind likely to settle an argument
outside in the car park’. A source
said: ‘Grant made it crystal clear:
Clarke claimed he was a reformed
character but making him a Road
Trip director was a risk. Feldman
and the rest all approved it.’
A Tory official said the Johnsons’
fears about the inquiry were
‘groundless’. Clarke denies any
wrongdoing.
l The Johnsons’ lawyers,
Deighton Pierce Glynn Solicitors,
can be contacted at
deightonpierceglynn.co.uk
rival with paedophile rumour’
Mark Clarke
Smile Sweetly. Be quietly supportive of Cha
like a good north east lad should be. Then rles
quietly do the right thing for the party.
Clarke has been obsessed with
getting on the list since he lost in
disgrace as Tory candidate in
Tooting, South London, at the 2010
General Election.
Well-placed sources say Mr
Semple’s election was ‘rigged’ after
Clarke used his power over
Conservative Future, the party’s
youth wing, to cast its block vote in
‘RIGGED’: A
message sent by
Clarke to a
supporter of Mr
Heslop urging him
to vote for Semple
favour of Mr Semple. Clarke sent a
social media message to a CF
delegate supporter of Mr Heslop in
his North East heartland, saying:
‘Smile sweetly. Be quietly
supportive of Charles like a good
north east lad should be. Then
quietly do the right thing for the
party.’ A female activist also claims
Clarke threatened her during the
‘MANIPULATED’: Mark Clarke
left, with ‘mentor’ Donal Blaney
Clarke’s phone without his
knowledge. Ms Brummitt broke off
the affair and went to work for
Tory MP Aidan Burley, a friend of
Clarke who was later forced to quit
politics after he attended a Nazithemed stag party (not Clarke’s).
But Clarke carried on pursuing
Ms Brummitt and they resumed
their affair. During Clarke’s ‘Road
Trip’ visits in the General Election,
Mrs Clarke – pregnant with the
couple’s second child – occasionally
attended events during the day.
However, Clarke spent nights with
Ms Brummitt at their Tory Partyfunded hotel room.
One close friend of Clarke said: ‘I
saw Sarah crying her eyes out once
and I told him he couldn’t treat her
like this. He told me it was none of
my business.’
Clarke’s affair with Ms Brummitt
continues to this day. ‘Sarah is a
wonderful person. Mark’s
treatment of her is an outrage,’ said
a friend. Mr Clarke said last night:
‘The comments about my personal
life and my wife and her family are
a gross invasion of mine and her
privacy (as well as defamatory).
There can be no public interest
justification for this intrusion.’
contest. ‘He told me to declare my
support for Rob Semple,’ she said.
‘When I refused he said, “If you
don’t you will find out what it is like
to be in opposition in North Korea.”
I ignored it.’
Mr Heslop’s supporters alleged
former CF chairman Clarke used
his influence to ensure that all
40 CF delegates were supporters of
Mr Semple. It is claimed that one
senior CF figure was banned from
voting because he made it clear he
did not back Mr Semple.
One Tory official said: ‘The
National Convention was rigged
by Clarke’s mob directly under
Lord Feldman’s nose and should be
Top Tory
turns on
‘goon’ he
mentored
By Simon Walters
MARK CLARKE’S former Tory
‘mentor’ last night rejected claims
that he was in charge of a sinister
‘Tory entryist’ group similar to
Momentum, the Left-wing proJeremy Corbyn organisation.
Donal Blaney, chairman of
the Young Britons’ Foundation,
where Clarke plotted attacks on
Conservative foes, compared
Clarke’s influence to ‘a rotting fish
sewn into the curtains’.
Mr Blaney spoke out after senior
Tory MP Charles Walker criticised
YBF, which was set up to train
would-be politicians. It has also
been described as a ‘Tory madrasa’.
Mr Walker, a member of the
Tory board overseeing the party’s
inquiry into the Clarke scandal,
said: ‘We have seen the damage
entryism has done to Labour with
organisations like Momentum and
we must stop it happening to the
SPLASH NEWS / CRAIG HIBBERT
FRIENDS of Mark Clarke’s loyal
wife Sarah have spoken of their
‘outrage’ at the way he has treated
her since they got married in 2012.
The couple met when Clarke was
selected as the Tory candidate in
Tooting, South London, where
Sarah was a £175,000-a-year NHS
administrator at the renowned St
George’s Hospital.
Clarke moved in with her
as he gave up work to campaign
full time, though it was all
in vain: he lost the Election
after a former girlfriend said
he was a ‘deceitful womaniser
and unfit to be an MP’.
It later emerged that during
the campaign he had sex on a
pub pool table with girlfriend
India Brummitt.
After his defeat, Clarke
launched what he called
‘Project Lazarus’ to rebuild
his reputation. Sarah,
an attractive blonde with
a solid Yorkshire family
background and well-paid
job in the NHS, was the
perfect bride.
Shortly before they
married in 2012, friends
told Clarke he must tell his
bride-to-be about his
continuing affair with Ms
Brummitt, who is ten years
younger than Sarah. Clarke
declined.
At his stag party, he outraged a
male member of his bride’s
family, who was present when he
told guests his obscene nickname
for her. Ms Brummitt did not attend
the wedding and was distraught
when she reportedly received a text
message from Clarke’s mobile that
day stating: ‘It should have been
you.’ The message was sent as a
prank by a guest who grabbed
re-run. Everyone knew that it was
going on, but – like everything else
Clarke and co got up to – no one
lifted a finger.’
As National Convention chairman,
Mr Semple is deputy chairman
of the Conservative Board
overseeing the inquiry by law firm
Clifford Chance into the ‘Tatler
Tory’ scandal.
There is no suggestion by
The Mail on Sunday that Clarke,
Mr Semple or Baroness Pidding
had anything to do with the
paedophile smears.
Mr Walker last night denied
spreading false rumours about
Mr Heslop.
‘A rotting fish sewn
into the curtains’
Conservatives. I’m deeply concerned
at the prevalence of YBF activists
in our party. Our links with groups
like this must be reviewed.’
But lawyer Mr Blaney, who runs
the Thatcherite Conservative Way
Forward group, where Elliott
Johnson worked shortly before he
killed himself, attacked Clarke –
and claimed the Tories were trying
to scapegoat YBF for Elliott’s death.
He said: ‘I feel like a landlord who
has allowed a tenant to stay in a
buy-to-let for too long.
‘They’ve finally gone – and
now I’ve found dead bodies under
the floorboards, rotting fish sewn
into the curtains, and s**t smeared
over the walls.’
And he accused Clarke of
‘exploiting my name, my contacts,
my reputation, my generosity and
my business. He groomed and
manipulated me and I feel a fool
for not seeing what he was doing.’
Mr Blaney denied Clarke learned
to smear opponents in YBF. ‘We
make it plain that personal stuff
is strictly off-limits,’ he said.
And he said Clarke was a ‘goon’
who modelled himself on Malcolm
Tucker, the political spin doctor in
TV series The Thick Of It, played
by Peter Capaldi.
‘The only people to blame for the
behaviour of Clarke and his acolytes
are they themselves,’ he added.
‘People should take responsibility
for their own actions. I am. So
should Clarke, Lord Feldman and
everyone else.’
Friends of Mr Blaney fear the
scandal – which grew out of a feud
between Mr Blaney and Clarke
after the Election – will destroy
YBF and CWF.

Suicide-case Tory `tried to leak` video of rival performing a sex act

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