Reform UK leader Richard Tice has hit out at Tory MP William Wragg, branding him “hypocrite of the 21st Century”. Mr Tice made the remarks during his “Sunday Sermon” on GB News.
Mr Wragg, the MP for Hazel Grove, said he was “manipulated” into handing over the personal phone numbers of colleagues he met on the gay dating app, Grindr.
Mr Wragg told the Times that he had given the phone numbers over to the man on Grindr, after sending him compromising pictures of himself.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has since praised Mr Wragg for giving a “courageous and fulsome” apology.
However, business tycoon and insurgent political leader Mr Tice had no such sympathy for the Tory MP.
He told his GB News audience: “We’ve got a new award. It’s not hypocrite of the week, not hypocrite of the month or indeed of the year. We have a new award for hypocrites of the 21st century. It’s that significant.”
Making reference to Mr Wragg’s standing as chair of the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) and vice-chair of the 1922 committee, Mr Tice told his viewers: “I’d like you to imagine that you are vice chairman of a very, very important committee about standards, about behaviour. Imagine you’re chairman of an even more important committee about public administration and constitutional affairs.
“You need to be a person of great integrity, of probity and of good judgment. Just put yourself in those shoes.”
Then making reference to Mr Wragg’s track record of calling for prime ministers, MPs and the speaker to resign over various missteps and misdemeanours – such as Boris Johnson over partygate – Mr Tice said: “So good are you at this matter of integrity and probity that when anybody in the place that you work – which might happen to be, for example, the House of Commons – that if someone doesn’t do things properly, if they exercise misjudgement, then of course you call for them to resign. No ifs, no buts.”
The Reform UK leader, whose party is on course to severely dent the governing Conservatives at the upcoming general election said of Mr Wragg’s shocking error: “Unbelievable, talk about a complete and utter failure of judgement. It’s hard to think of anything more significant than this. This is potentially putting people’s security at risk.
“You just willy nilly send out a bunch of telephone numbers of important people. A horrific lapse of judgement.”
Added that for the “grotesque, appalling, security lapse of judgement”, Mr Wragg “must step down, surely?”
Finishing his bitter sermon, Mr Tice said: “I think what we’re seeing is a nominee for the candidate of the greatest hypocrite in the UNited Kingdom in the 21st century
“I think that candidate is a Mr William Wragg MP and he is my nominee and award-winner for the greatest hypocrite so far in the 21st century. Truly unbelievable.”