The Conservatives asked Mark Clarke to get someone to 'shoot' the people complaining about him

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Mark Clarke is at the centre of an alleged bullying scandal that has rocked the Conservative Party.


The Conservative Party received a complaint from a young Tory activist about Mark Clarke in May 2014 - just two months before Clarke became the boss of RoadTrip 2015.

An email, published in The Sun newspaper, shows that Josh Hitchens, the then President of LSE university Conservative society, complained to a staffer at the Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ), about an email he had received from Clarke.

According to the Sun, Hitchens received an aggresive email from Clarke after writing a newspaper article that was critical of Conservative future, a Tory youth movement that Clarke was involved with.

The email published by the Sun shows that just ten hours after CCHQ received the complaint, an advisor to the then co-Chairman of the Conservative party Grant Shapps forwarded the complaint on to Clarke.

The advisor included a note to Clarke appearing to suggest that in the future it would be safer to get someone else to "shoot" people instead of sending aggressive emails himself. Business Insider has reached out to the advisor, asking him to confirm exactly what he meant by the word "shoot."

The note said:

Might be safer press-wise for you to go around smiling at people, and getting someone else to shoot them.

You can read the full email below:

Exc: Snr Tories received complaints about Clarke in 2014. Immediately leaked them to Clarke: https://t.co/zaD0ZnQDmS pic.twitter.com/z67Vk1IQPw

- Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) December 14, 2015

In September 2015 a young Conservative activist called Elliott Johnson took his own life and left a note alleging that he had been bullied by Clarke. Along with the note, Johnson left a recording that appears to reveal both Clarke and Andre Walker, the man referred to in the email above, threatening to expose Johnson for a minor mistake he may have made in violation of election law.

Law firm Clifford Chance are currently undertaking an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Johnson.

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