Time to clean up politics and weed out risk-taker MPs

IN THE past few days, Sunday Express readers will have been asking themselves what is wrong with our Members of Parliament. Barely a fortnight ago, Conservative MP William Wragg was forced to step down from Parliamentary duties after admitting he had sent naked photos of himself to someone he had never met.

- Jake Berry

And only last week, the Fylde MP, Mark Menzies, was accused of using tens of thousands of pounds of campaign funds for personal expenses, including to pay off “bad people” who had locked him up in a flat after a night out that appears to have gone horribly wrong.

While both men deny any wrongdoing, these reports point to a lifestyle being pursued by some MPs that is as alien to me as inhabiting another planet.

This sort of extraordinary behaviour is not limited to the Conservative Party. Also in the past week, Peter Murrell, husband of former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and ex-CEO of that party, was charged with embezzlement by police in Scotland.

Greater Manchester Police also launched multiple lines of investigation into the historic tax affairs of Labour’s deputy Angela Rayner.

In total, 18 MPs have lost their party whip for some form of misdemeanour, meaning they are permanently or temporarily excluded from the political party under whose banner they were elected.

Of these, eight are Conservative and seven are Labour. If all 18 banded together, they could form the fourth-largest party in Westminster.