Tory Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has been accused of “political game playing” in his attempt to smear two SNP MPs in an Armistice Day scandal.
The Conservative cabinet Minister has been branded a hypocrite for trying to stitch up senior SNP MPs David Linden and Drew Hendry as drunkards on a political visit to armed forces in Gibraltar.
The two nationalist MPs have angrily denied an Ministry of Defence briefing that along with a Labour MP that they were “drinking heavily” on an flight to the overseas territory.
Wallace has written to the SNP and Labour to express his “disappointment” that the pair were drinking and argumentative with MoD personnel on arrival.
Wallace said: “This behaviour puts military personnel in a difficult position and risks undermining respect for Parliament.”
It was reported they were part of a 15-strong all-parliamentary delegation on the trip, and had been “drinking heavily” during the flight to Gibraltar. The claims are emphatically denied by the two MPs.
But in increasingly bitter briefing war it now claimed two Tory MPs on the trip, Ben Everitt and Christian Wakeford, were alleged to have gone out until the early hours.
A source close to the trip said: “People are staggered by the hypocrisy of Ben Wallace and his ill-advised attempts to drag the armed forces into political game playing.
“It was a serious error of judgement on his behalf, which has spectacularly backfired, given two Conservative MPs were out on the lash in Gibraltar until the early hours.”
While both SNP MPs were present and correct for events the following day, the source added: “If anything is disrespectful, its Conservative MPs turning up hungover to official events with service personnel on the eve of Armistice Day.”
The tit-for-tat briefing on an overseas trip breaks a convention that no details are reported of all-party overseas trips by MPs.
The move by Wallace is seen by the SNP as a blundering attempt to divert from the sleaze scandal engulfing Boris Johnson’s government for the last two weeks.
The Daily Record approached both Tory MPs for comment.
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