Jaw-dropping revelations from a Conservative former chief whip call into question not just the system, but his own judgment

In the small hours of the morning, the phone rings beside Simon Hart’s bed. On the line is a drunk Tory MP, claiming to be stuck in a Bayswater brothel with a woman he thinks might be a KGB agent, who has just demanded £500 “and left me in a room with twelve naked women and CCTV”.

It sounds like something from The Thick of It, but for the chief whip to the last Conservative government, calls like this were all part of a day’s (or night’s) work.