Return of the sleazy party: the Conservatives and the Owen Paterson affair

As No 10 ham-fistedly let the scandal spread, was this about saving an old Brexit ally or protecting the PM himself?

A Conservative MP who entered parliament in 2010 began to receive what he described as a series of unusually persistent" texts from his Tory whip last week. The member in question had been part of the Conservative intake that followed the parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009.

The arrival of this new group at Westminster - many of them with impressive previous careers outside politics - was supposed to demonstrate, as David Cameron said at the time, that his party was reforming its ways, ridding itself of sleaze.