Lee Anderson has revealed he was threatened by someone trying to blackmail him – but said the moral of the story was not to give into blackmail.
The Reform MP also questioned the response from the Conservative Party after William Wragg was called ‘courageous’ despite handing out private contact details.
Speaking on GB News, Lee Anderson said:
“I’ve had a few attempts at being blackmailed and one that springs to mind is from early last January last year where I had this random email from a so called lady saying that she had got a videotape of me and it was worth my while to go and meet her at this pub at a particular time and to bring loads of cash, or something like, that in exchange for this video.
“I just looked at it and thought, ‘somebody’s got a video of me.’ You don’t know what happened a long time ago in your past when you’ve had a few too many.
“But I’ve always said since day one, because there’s lots of traps out there in parliament for MPs, I always said I would never succumb to blackmail. So I just sent it to the local police inspector. He got onto it. They tried to trace the IP address but they couldn’t, for some particular reason.
“But I never turned up at the pub and I didn’t turn up with a wad of cash and I think the moral of the story is, you cannot give in to blackmail.
“William Wragg has been incredibly daft. I’ve said repeatedly over the past week or so that what he wants to do in his private life is none of my concern. He can get up to whatever he wants.
“But the thing that disturbed me most was the fact that he gave the phone numbers of colleagues and then left them open to be blackmailed. And that’s throwing your mates under a bus to save your own skin. It’s not a good look.
“It’s funny, isn’t it, because when I made some comments a month or so ago about Mayor Khan, I was called an Islamophobe and kicked out of the party.
“I think William has done something foolish and far worse than what I did and has been called courageous, so you make your mind up about the process.”