William Wragg resigns Tory whip after divulging MPs’ phone numbers

William Wragg has resigned the Conservative party whip days after admitting to giving out colleagues’ personal phone numbers to someone he had met on a dating app.

Asked whether Wragg had jumped or been pushed, Holden told Sky News the now-independent MP had “made his decision”, adding: “It’s quite clear his career in public life is at an end.”

At least a dozen people working in Westminster, including a serving government minister, received unsolicited WhatsApp messages from two suspicious mobile numbers.

The MP for Bosworth said: “The first set of messages I got was on a day I was with my wife and I got a one-time open photo on WhatsApp of an explicit image of a naked lady.

This time, however, I was sat with my team in the constituency office, so we were able to record the conversation and catch photos and videos of the messages coming through including another explicit female image.”

The WhatsApp user, who used a young woman’s photo as their profile picture, claimed to have met the former special adviser at the Midland hotel bar near the Conservative party conference in Manchester.