Checking my phone for messages, I saw there was one from two Westminster staffers, young assistants working for MPs. I opened it and found myself staring at a screenshot that no amount of mind bleach will ever expunge from my brain.
It was a photograph of an MP in a compromising position. I could only view the photograph once, for 30 seconds, before it disappeared from my screen but that was long enough to know who the MP was and precisely what he was doing.
The staffers had recently contacted me with inside information in the aftermath of my highly controversial book The Plot. This exposed the destructive antics of an inner gang of power-crazed conspirators at the dark heart of the Conservative Party and how they plotted – successfully – to bring down Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. It caused a political storm when it was serialised in the Mail a year ago.
Numerous other Westminster insiders had come forward with shocking evidence that backed up the allegations I made in that book and I had just had a long conversation with an eminent former Cabinet minister. Speaking confidentially, he told me: ‘Far too many Conservative MPs were seriously found wanting in how they behaved.’
My conclusion was that part of the issue with the Conservative Party is that on almost every level, it was in the gutter. Supplied by those two staffers and staring me in the face was the shocking proof that this was so.
It was unusual for me to speak to staffers. They are mostly young and it’s often their first job out of university.
Nadine Dorries checked her phone for messages, and saw there was one from two Westminster staffers, young assistants working for MPs. She opened it and found herself staring at a screenshot that ‘no amount of mind bleach will ever expunge from my brain’
Over the years, concerns have been raised about how vulnerable they are, with stories of bullying, sexual harassment and intimidation commonplace enough for a complaints process to have been established.
So I agreed to meet them on Zoom. After ten minutes of small talk, they revealed they were gay and had thought they wanted to be MPs at some point in their lives. But both were disabused of that notion after 18 months in Westminster and were leaving for other jobs. They were both instantly likeable and funny – but the story they had to tell was a deadly serious one.
‘Nadine,’ they said, ‘we want to speak to you about the Conservative gay network in Westminster and how it operates.’
I almost choked. ‘I can’t write about that,’ I said. ‘Everyone will say I’m homophobic.’
I honestly found some of the conversation I had with them difficult to repeat. But they insisted they had to be heard.
‘If we were young women being abused by MPs, someone might listen. But there are gay interns and staffers in Westminster who are groomed and abused, and for whom there is no safeguarding, no protection.’
They told me of the predatory, abusive behaviour they had witnessed and which they themselves were subjected to. What follows, then, is not my story, it’s 100 per cent theirs, which I have verified through the contacts they led me to and through a number of gay MPs I know and spoke to.
Nadine Dorries says MPs began to receive messages and naked photographs on their phones; two MPs opened the naked photographs and sent compromising photographs of themselves in return
At the heart of this sex scandal was a Tory MP – now an ex-MP – called William Wragg. I have to admit I never liked this Gollum-like creature who was more likely to be found in a Westminster bar and tea-rooms than in his office.
I wouldn’t waste my time writing about such a reprehensible individual, if there was not a serious underlying message relating to how the Conservative Party operates and highlighting behaviours that surely can never be tolerated in the future.
The two staffers told me that at Tory party conferences, Wragg – who for some reason was a member of the influential 1922 Committee of backbenchers – would give young gay men tickets to the committee’s drinks reception. The implication was clear: he wanted them to have sex with him. They weren’t MPs or even candidates but were interested in working in politics and were flattered to attend. Eager to get on in the party, they would fall for it.
Elected in 2015 for Hazel Grove in Greater Manchester, Wragg’s parliamentary career seemed to have been defined by being someone who liked to call for resignations. Whether it was a prime minister or the Speaker of the House, Lindsay Hoyle, or even me, he wasn’t picky.
He appeared to love the media spotlight and one of his prominent forays in this arena followed his sending of naked photographs to a stranger he met on the gay dating app, Grindr.
He was unrepentant. In an interview, he said he wasn’t embarrassed, that what he did was quite normal. Dismissing anyone who thought an MP should behave with a little more decorum as ‘pearl-clutchers’, he brazened it out – though I wonder what would happen if a female MP sent nude photographs of herself to unknown men she met on a dating app and described it as normal behaviour.
Would she get away with it or would she be absolutely savaged and her life and career destroyed?
Worse was to come. It emerged that he didn’t just send nude photographs of himself, he then went on to hand over the phone numbers of various MPs, Westminster staffers and journalists, because he feared exposure by his new-found pal on Grindr, who was possibly asking for them in order to compromise the security of those MPs or even to blackmail them.
MPs began to receive messages and naked photographs on their phones; two MPs opened the naked photographs and sent compromising photographs of themselves in return. Others had more sense. Straight MPs received photos of naked women, gay MPs of naked men.
Interestingly, I was told that the MPs and staffers whose names and numbers he handed over to the Grindr blackmailer were all men he fancied or had tried to sleep with.
Wragg was also involved in the notorious incident in the bar of the Carlton Club when a young staffer accused Tory whip Chris Pincher of pinching his bum.
One of the many oddities of this story – which led to Boris being forced out after the mass resignation of Cabinet ministers – is that the so-called ‘victim’ never formally complained about what Pincher had done to him that night, so what precisely happened in the Carlton Club bar is still shrouded in mystery.
The pinch victim texted William Wragg: ‘We’ve got him’
I know the name of the ‘victim’ but I can’t reveal it because it is against the law to identify a victim of sexual abuse unless they give permission. What I learned from the staffers, however, was that he was a friend of Wragg. Their association went back to the young man’s early teens and as proof they produced photographs of Wragg and him together.
They said that when he was older, Wragg had brought him down to London to work there. I sought the views of a gay MP I know. He had heard that, after the Pincher affair, the young man in question texted Wragg with the words: ‘We’ve got him.’ This may have referred to Pincher or to Boris Johnson, or both.
Pincher was a target because he was organising a campaign among Tory MPs to ‘save Big Dog’ – ie, Boris. ‘They saw Pincher as being a main obstacle to bringing down Boris. He stood between the plotters and what they wanted to achieve. They just needed one more heave and catching out Pincher was it. I suspect the Pincher affair was a gay sting. In the Carlton Club that night, Chris had drunk a few. He was surrounded by Boris’s enemies.’
I went back to the two Westminster staffers, who sent me more photographs of the victim – on various holidays, drinking on the terrace of the House of Commons, at parties, with MPs and journalists. He appeared to know everyone and to be everywhere. ‘Look at every MP in those photos,’ they told me. ‘They all had something to do with the attacks on Boris, whether it was sending in resignation letters or commentating, or writing about it or using lines they had been fed, or organising it. They were all involved.’
They then asked me: ‘We have some photographs which are much more sensitive and they might shock you. They involve nudity. Do you want to see them?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Oh, they won’t shock me,’ I reassured them. ‘I’m a former nurse and a woman of the world.’ In truth, I was dreading the next photograph and with good reason.
Another photograph downloaded on to my phone and there before me was the image of an MP I know well and have worked with for years, stark naked in his House of Commons office, proudly holding an erection in his hand, grinning at the camera. Lounging on the green leather window seat was another male MP, lying back, also naked, thankfully his member covered by his hand holding a glass, also grinning.
This was all clearly taking place in Portcullis House, the building on Victoria Embankment which houses many MPs’ offices. Behind them the London Eye was revolving, its passengers unaware, I hoped, of what was going on just the other side of the river.
I couldn’t speak. I was affronted and confused. Nothing will ever erase from my mind what I had just seen. The staffers explained: ‘Every night in the offices of certain MPs, two of them in Portcullis House, group sex sessions were organised by a WhatsApp thread. Not just gay MPs, straight MPs would join in, too.’ ‘There were women there?’ I said, truly shocked. I struggled to think of a single female Conservative MP who would behave in this way. ‘No,’ they replied. ‘We should have said men who – to the outside world – are married and straight.’
Another photo popped up. An MP I know to have a wife and a young child was staring out at me, leaning into his camera, obviously in a state of sexual arousal. They told me: ‘We trimmed off the bottom of that picture so you couldn’t see what his hand was doing.’
I was appalled. I had worked with these people. My brain was telling me what they did privately was none of my business, but then my outrage grew. This is a workplace that politicians spend years trying to be a part of, to be a Member of the mother of all Parliaments, to have the right to be part of the Government of Great Britain and they are standing there naked in working hours.
Disgraced, Former Tory MP William Wragg
The disrespect still takes my breath away. Those offices are in the home of democracy. If anyone else in any other work setting behaved in such a way, they would be immediately dismissed. The staffers’ disclosures continued. ‘That straight MP often has sex with gay MPs but he also has an ongoing thing with a vulnerable woman who works in Westminster too. He uses her for sex.
‘If he put as much effort into his job as an MP as he does into having sex, it’s fair to say he would be in Cabinet by now.
‘Sex is pretty much a big thing in Westminster, at least with Conservatives.’
Someone once told me that a Labour MP was more likely to have an affair with Doreen on the checkout at the Co-op, but these days Conservative MPs had sex with each other.
The staffers went on: ‘Wragg would invite gay men on to a group and then start to invite straight MPs. Some of the straight MPs would send pictures of their penis, or…’
Another photograph popped up on to my screen, another straight MP I knew, wearing only briefs. ‘Will would get everyone on to the group and then he would say where the ‘drinks’ were happening or where everyone was meeting up.’
I was then sent another screenshot of this happening. ‘Once the group was established, it was on a need-to-know basis only. If you said you couldn’t make it, you were out and immediately removed from the group because, of course, it wasn’t actually drinks which were being arranged.’
‘How do you know it was for group sex?’ I asked.
They both laughed. ‘Since when did you feel the need to interview for drinks with a photograph of your personal credentials to attend? Or invite someone with the words, ‘please come, you’re as fit as f***’.’
I read the messages. There was no doubting the innuendo.
I called a gay friend who is also an MP to help me to make sense of it all. ‘Is there anything else I need to know?’ I asked him.
He was happy to oblige. He appeared to know Wragg very well and told me: ‘When Will arrived in Westminster in 2015, he was pretty normal for the first few months but then something happened to him. He made it very clear his one ambition in Westminster was to have sex with as many young Conservative staffers and interns as possible. He used to talk about going to a gay sauna in Vauxhall. You might think that’s his business but MPs are vulnerable.
‘I’m gay but I would never go there because I have a brain. He was an easy target, a sitting duck who compromised his own security and ultimately that of others.
‘He was famous for holding court in the Carlton Club two nights a week, always buying the G and Ts and running up huge bar bills that, it was rumoured, Conservative Central Office later had to pay off.
‘He was always there with young gay men, different ones every week, always those wanting to become a councillor or get on the candidates’ list, young men who Will did favours for and I think you know what I mean by that.
‘He never spoke about his sexual encounters when holding court but would openly brag about them with young male staffers, interns and MPs one-to-one.
‘He did it with me and I was repulsed. His behaviour raised huge safeguarding issues.
‘More than one complaint was lodged against him in the Whips’ Office, but weirdly, they never came to anything.
‘The big question for me is who was protecting him? Why would the party tolerate in its ranks an MP like Wragg? Why wasn’t he thrown out years ago? It just doesn’t make any sense.’
I had no answers. What I can say is that how people behave in private is their own business, consenting adults and all that.
But I feel sure that the behaviour described to me is not what voters expect from the people who represent them.
Adapted from Downfall by Nadine Dorries (HarperCollins, £25), to be published November 21. © Nadine Dorries 2024. To order a copy for £21.25 (offer valid to 30/11/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937