The new wave of sleaze in the Tory party points towards history repeating itself - Andrew Vine

Add to that a refusal to accept money for anything unless it is entirely above board and the inevitable conclusion is that I’m just not the right sort of person for the party. Couldn’t possibly take a chance on a chap who behaves like that.

Of course, I’m being facetious. The overwhelming majority of Conservative MPs are decent and conscientious people who must be horrified and despairing in equal measure at the antics of colleagues who seem to regard their position as a licence to indulge in sexual or financial shenanigans.

They may be relatively few in number, but there are now more than enough of them to stain the party with sleaze, diminishing still further its chances of winning the election.

The Conservative roll of dishonour has just lengthened a little further, thanks to the MP for Fylde, in Lancashire, Mark Menzies, who has been suspended from the party over a bizarre allegation – which he denies – that he made a late-night call to an elderly party volunteer asking for £5,000 to free him from the clutches of “bad people” who had him locked in a flat.

He's an unfortunate individual, Mr Menzies. Outlandish things just seem to keep on befalling him. Ten years ago, he was all over the front page of a tabloid newspaper when a teenage male prostitute claimed the MP had paid for sex and asked for an illegal drug. Not all of it was true, said Mr Menzies.

Not all of it. That’s alright then. Three years afterwards, the police interviewed Mr Menzies over an allegation he had deliberately fed alcohol to a dog to get it drunk and then started a fight with its owner. Not true, said the MP and no criminal action followed.

I don’t feel at all sorry for Mr Menzies, despite all the misfortune and baseless allegations he has had to endure.

But I do feel sorry for a substantial number of our friends and neighbours across the Pennines, who must wonder what they have done to deserve some of their elected representatives.

Virtually next door to Mr Menzies’ Fylde constituency, the voters of Blackpool South go to the polls next month in a by-election caused by the resignation of their Tory MP, Scott Benton, who was caught in a newspaper sting offering to break parliamentary rules by lobbying ministers about gambling in exchange for payment.

Less than an hour’s drive east, in Greater Manchester, the people of Hazel Grove have an MP in William Wragg who was one of three Conservatives to have sent naked pictures of themselves to strangers who contacted them. Mr Wragg was then blackmailed into giving out colleagues’ phone numbers.

Sleaze has already done for other Tory MPs. The party lost Wellingborough after its incumbent, Peter Bone, stepped down after being accused of bullying and sexual misconduct, including a claim he exposed himself to an aide.

It also lost Tamworth after Chris Pincher resigned amid accusations of drunkenly groping another man in a bar.

What a litany of seedy and grubby behaviour this is, made all the worse because its perpetrators belong to a party whose claim to be the upholder of decent values has long been at the heart of its pitch to voters.

Instead, the stench of hypocrisy clings to it because of the sleaze in its ranks, and senior figures aren’t helping.

When William Wragg admitted exchanging explicit pictures with somebody he didn’t know, the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said he had been “courageous”. What offensive rubbish.

Voters will be repelled by Conservative sleaze. We’ve been here before, in the dying days of John Major’s administration in the mid-1990s.

A succession of MPs either caught with their trousers down, or keeping them on but lining the pockets with dodgy payments, helped to convince Britain that a long period in government had bred a smugness and a belief among some Tories that they could do whatever they liked and get away with it.

They found out the hard way that Britain wouldn’t stand for it. And the new wave of sleaze points towards history repeating itself.