Martin Bell: ‘The sleaze now is worse than when I ran for MP’

Independent candidate who toppled disgraced Conservative in 1997 urges non-Tory voters to think tactically in byelections

The former anti-sleaze MP Martin Bell has urged voters to turn this week's byelections into a referendum on the loss of trust in public life", as he warned that Boris Johnson's conduct had slipped well below those of the government he successfully stood against in the 1990s.

Bell ran as an anti-sleaze unity candidate in the Cheshire constituency of Tatton in 1997, in the wake of a series of scandals that helped sink John Major's government. However, he said that the attempts by Johnson to change rules for political ends meant things were worse now".