Expelled Tory Mark Clarke, the CCHQ election guru at the centre of explosive bullying and blackmail allegations, is a former lover of Cabinet minister Justine Greening, reports today’s Sun. Greening was the MP for Putney during 2010 while Clarke was the Tory A-list candidate in the neighbouring Tooting constituency. The now International Development Secretary is just one of a number of top Tory women who had a sexual relationship with Clarke. Evidence of how Clarke was let in through the back door.

The CCHQ priority in all this is to protect Lord Feldman by blaming his co-chairman Grant Shapps for a failure to discipline and block Mark Clarke’s return from his previous banishment. Friends of Feldman emphasise that he had never heard of Clarke until this all blew up. The only problem with this is discipline is not a matter for the Party Chairman – it is for the board. Here we have to bring in Baroness Pidding, who was chairwoman of the National Conservative Convention and a close friend of Mark Clarke. It was Pidding who arranged for Clarke to be feted by Cameron in public at the Conservative National Convention as recently as July, effectively crowning his rehabilitation. Pidding is also an old friend of Simon Mort, who was appointed to investigate the complaints against Mark Clarke. The nature of those complaints were leaked back to Mark Clarke as, fatally, were the names of the complainants. The transmission mechanism for how Elliott Johnson’s name and complaint got back to Clarke should be the key question for the CCHQ investigation. Who knew about the complaints? Who knew Mark Clarke? Who told Clarke that Elliott Johnson had made a complaint?

Neither Feldman or Shapps in all fairness had a central role in membership discipline – Shapps no longer even had a CCHQ role after May. This is the problem for CCHQ’s investigation, the leak that led to Clarke bullying Elliott Johnson must have come from someone at the top, privy to inside information, who was also close to Clarke.  Elliott’s father, Ray Johnson, has told Guido that he has asked the police to interview Emma Pidding…