Tory chair Shapps faces calls to resign over two jobs 'fib'

Grant Shapps, the Tory party chairman, has been given an open invitation to target South Thanet and try to decapitate Ukip after Nigel Farage said he would quit as party leader if he fails to win the Kent seat in the general election.

“What credibility would Ukip have in the Commons if others had to enunciate party policy in Parliament and the party leader was only allowed in as a guest?” he asks in his memoir The Purple Revolution, serialised in the Daily Telegraph.

“Was I supposed to brief Ukip policy from the Westminster Arms? No – if I fail to win South Thanet, it is curtains for me. I will have to step down.”

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Many believe that without Farage’s charismatic leadership, Ukip would shrivel and die.

Recent polling in the Conservative-held seat has shown Farage and the Tory candidate neck-and-neck. But this revelation will give Shapps the incentive to throw everything the Tories possess at winning it.

• Farage by the numbers: tidbits from The Purple Revolution

Expect a string of Tory ministers and possibly the Conservatives’ ultimate campaign weapon - Boris Johnson - to be sent down to this previously sleepy corner of Kent to get the Tory vote out on 7 May.

All of which should have Shapps rubbing his hands in glee - if it were not for an embarassing “screw-up” along the way.

The Guardian has revealed that Shapps apparently lied when he denied on LBC radio three weeks ago that he had held down a second job as a millionaire web marketer under a pseudonym - 'Michael Green' – even after he became an MP in 2005.

Shapps told LBC: “To be absolutely clear - I don’t have a second job, have never had a second job, whilst being an MP. End of story.”

But the Guardian has obtained a tape recording of Shapps from 2006 - a year after he became an MP - making it clear he was still “performing” as Michael Green and still selling “wealth creation products” (example: ‘Stinking Rich Three’).

On the recording, Shapps says: “We are suggesting if people are listening to this pretty currently - and we are in the summer of 2006 whilst we are recording” then, to paraphrase, it was a great time “to make a ton of cash by Christmas…”

The Guardian reports this morning that “rather than running down his operations, it appears that in 2006 Shapps was expanding the company”.

Shapps imitially dismissed the Guardian report, tweeting: “Old story: all properly declared at the time and all many years ago. Labour just hate business.”

But with calls coming in from Labour and Ukip for his resignation, he has now admitted to having “screwed up” his dates and that when he deinied on radio having held a second job he did so “over firmly”.

This morning Shapps refused to go on to Radio 4’s Today programme to talk about this contradiction - or fib - depending on your point of view - but John Mann, a Northern Labour MP who has a reputation for hounding MPs over the Commons rules, was only too pleased to put the boot in.

Mann called for Shapps to resign from Cameron's Cabinet as minister without portfolio. “Honesty and integrity are two of the key principles [of the Commons code of ethics]. He is not any old MP - he is chairman of the Conservative Party.

“He should go as minister without portfolio. The government made big play after the expenses scandal of bringing back integrity to politics. This does exactly the opposite.”

Having two jobs as an MP is not against the current rules. So Shapps has done nothing wrong, except he’s been caught out telling a lie or - again, depending on your point of view – being forgetful.

But it’s often the little lies that catch ministers out. Shapps has a seemingly safe seat in Welwyn Hatfield with a majority of 17,423, but while dreaming of killing off Farage, he may have to watch his own backyard.