Sexting scandal: what was the content of business minister Andrew Griffiths’ explicit messages?

The prime minister has lost another member of her ministerial team after Andrew Griffiths was forced to resign for sending sexually explicit messages to two of his constituents.

The small business minister, whose wife gave birth to their first child three months ago, also paid the women to share videos of a sexual nature, according to an investigation by the Sunday Mirror.

The Conservative MP for Burton and Theresa May’s former chief of staff said he was “deeply ashamed” of his behaviour “which has caused untold distress to my wife and family”. He has also apologised to the PM and his constituents.

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The BBC’s political correspondent Iain Watson said Griffiths, who decided to resign on Friday night ahead of publication yesterday, “jumped before he was pushed”.

One of the women he contacted, Imogen Treharne, 28, told the newspaper that Griffiths first messaged her in June after she shared a “racy” video on Snapchat.

The MP then reportedly sent more than 2,000 messages in three weeks to the two women. Treharne described the contents of the messages she received as “vile” and “disgusting”.

The Mirror alleges that Griffiths paid the women £700 and offered to rent a flat to meet for sex. “He demanded explicit photos and videos and described degrading sex acts in crude detail,” it reports.

He has been suspended from the Conservative party, pending an investigation.

It’s “a massive fall from grace for a man who became an MP in 2010 and cultivated an image as a happy-go-lucky, beer-loving northerner, a refreshingly ‘normal’ voice at Westminster,” the Sunday Times says.

The newspaper notes that Griffiths is the fourth senior Tory to leave the government in a sex scandal in recent years, following the departure of Damien Green, Michael Fallon and Brooks Newmark.