Tory Time: Andrew ‘Stinker’ Bridgen

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Jun 23, 2022

It’s always difficult for me to decide which Tory to dissect next. Such an overripe, overflowing cornucopia of cnuts! But Andrew ‘Stinker’ Bridgen is and always has been so committed to the world-beating dunderhead project Brexit, displaying this commitment with ongoing and very public dunderheadedness, that I had to go there. Hazmat suits on, ladies and germs.

If you’re not a British reader, and especially if you’re American, you might still enjoy the frisson and comfort of knowing how most of our right wing representatives are at least as corrupt, unpleasant, and batshit as yours.

Born in 1964. So within a year or so of me, like nearly every other MP I’ve profiled so far (see list at the end). It truly saddens me to discover how much more rancid my cohort is than I’d imagined. Stinker has been the Member of Parliament for North West Leicestershire since 2010, and was a vocal jockstrap of the Eurosceptic pressure group Leave Means Leave.

This man is 57 years old

Though all too often a chatterbox codpiece for the Crime Minister, Andrew has nonetheless been a prominent critic of Johnson, May, and Cameron, supporting various efforts to remove them from office. That’s partly because of his brain dead commitment to no deal/hard Brexit, but mostly just because he’s such a dickwad.

In 2009, he got involved via his blog in a ‘dirty tricks row’ involving a Leicestershire councillor who offered Conservative backing for the building of a village hall so long as an independent candidate stood down. Stinker, then a candidate to be MP, blamed it all on the ‘intransigence of certain unelected individuals at the very top of the county council.’ There was cross-party outrage, and the council’s chief executive and solicitor demanded proof and an explanation.

Nonetheless, Stinker stood by his smears, and became MP the very next year. He’s one of those Teflon Tories. You have to use the Wayback Machine to find out anything about that arrogant idiocy now.

In 2013, Andrew said on BBC Radio that ‘good’ MPs were put off doing the job by poor pay and had to ask their families to make sacrifices. He said similar things in 2015 when MPs were awarded a 10% pay rise, criticising wealthier ones for turning it down and saying he absolutely would trouser it.

If you don’t like public service, Stinker, why don’t you go back where you came from?

You might wonder why I’ve adopted that nickname for Andrew. Well, while whinging “MPs pooooooor”, he was making yet another income from his family’s business.

In 2014, when Stinker was still a director of AB Produce, the Environment Agency said it could lose its licence. A ‘urine-like’ smell from ‘lagoons’ of rotting vegetable matter (at the Bridgen farm, not the Tory party conference, just to be clear) caused neighbours to complain for years. It wasn’t until official enforcement action was threatened that the putrid pong was finally dealt with.

I’d call Andrew ‘Putrid Vegetable Matter’ but it's just not as catchy.

Yes, I’ve long since passed snarky, took a left at salty, and am now driving over the speed limit on savage, I know this. Because Brexit. I was made to move back to the UK in July 2021 after 7 years away, where I had no home or job, my life turned upside down at 55, without my consent. The more Brexity someone has been, the more they double down on it now, the less forgiving I am. I think I’ve earned that.

Back to Stinker Farm, where by 2018 things had gone putrid again in a different direction. Andrew had a massive falling out with the farming empire aka his own family, over, guess what? You’ll never guess. Go on, have a stab at it.

Okay, money. It was about money. It comes as a shock, I know.

Stinker accused his younger brother Paul (the managing director) and other AB Produce directors of theft and fraud, while at the same time allegedly paying no rent whatsoever to live in a £1.5m house the company owned. MPs pooooooooooooor.

He ran the firm himself before becoming an MP, and retained a 45% share. After reporting fraud to the police, he started a legal action against the company. In response, it denied his allegations and claimed he owed them over £100,000 in rent.

The police dropped their probe, having found no evidence of wrongdoing. The company’s board issued a statement, saying, ‘It remains a matter of speculation what Andrew Bridgen's motivations might have been in making these allegations. What is indisputable is the extreme angst this action has caused to employees ... and of course the directors who were the subject of serious allegations of theft and fraud questioning their integrity and that of the corporate operations.’

Stinker’s legal action remained ongoing, while he himself faced legal action over the alleged unpaid rent on the 5-bedroom house with swimming pool and 5.5 acres of land. Bridgen Investments, a property company within the AB Produce group, had bought it from Stinker for £1.5million in 2012. In 2018 he was still living there with his new second wife, creator of the lifestyle blog ‘Wives of Westminster’.

Yes, really.

AB Produce also claimed that Stinker still used a company car and received ‘other personal benefits’, the taxable value of which was £81,000 for the three years to 2017. The company was late filing accounts and lost its auditors, claiming that the fraud allegations had caused delays. It had made a pre-tax loss of £244,000, which it blamed on … ‘significant challenges in the post-Brexit era' including the supply of goods and labour from Europe.

And you thought your family had fallen out over Brexit.

Now. Get this. A getting-divorced Stinker sold his constituency house in 2015 for £2m under a government High Speed 2 (HS2) rail link compensation scheme because the house was 100 feet from the proposed route. Local campaigners called him out for selling at an early stage under the exceptional hardship scheme. He said but I lost the most money waaaaaah MPs poooooooor.

Fast forward to 2017, and Stinker has to apologise to the House of Commons for failing to declare that the home was being bought by HS2 at … an HS2 debate. He was found to have breached the rules governing MPs’ interests by the Commons standards watchdog. His defence was ‘I’ve been a critic of HS2’.

Then there’s 2016, when Stinker had to defend claiming nearly £25,000 on expenses in a single year for staying in London hotels. He said they were cheaper than having a flat. In the same time period — when, it must be noted, he was between wives — he didn’t let his staff claim expenses for the same thing. He said, “They come down and work for me two days in London, stay at their own expense down here, and then go back and then work in the constituency the rest of the time.”

On BBC 5 Live radio in 2018, during a discussion of Brexit, Stinker said any British citizen was entitled to an Irish passport as part of a special arrangement with the Republic of Ireland. He of course ‘mis-spoke’. The host claimed that Stinker hung up during the news break, then couldn’t be reached for clarification.

Stinker had to apologise yet again in 2019 after defending Jacob Rees-Mogg's comments that Grenfell Tower fire victims should have known ‘stay put’ advice from the London Fire Brigade was wrong. He’s been accused by Pink News of making homophobic statements, accused of anti-semitic statements on a number of occasions, and supported comments made by Boris Johnson calling burka-wearing Muslim women ‘letterboxes’.

Cretins

With all that in mind, let’s pop back to Stinker’s little family farrago. His legal action against his own business was on the basis that the firm treated him unfairly and forced him out, while they said he owed back-rent.

In April this year the High Court finally ruled against Stinker in the matter. Judge Brian Rawlings said he “lied under oath and behaved in an abusive, arrogant and aggressive manner,” was “an unreliable and combative witness who tried to conceal his own misconduct,” and that he “gave evasive and argumentative answers and tangential speeches that avoided answering the questions.”

What, a Tory MP?? You NEVER.

Other court findings aside from lying under oath were that Stinker ‘pressured’ a police officer to look into his claims, which were false and took up a year of police time. He lied about the circumstances of his departure from the firm: far from being forced out, he quit as it might reduce the financial settlements included in divorce arrangements relating to his first wife. He’s said to have sent a series of texts to one AB Produce director which were so aggressive it brought them close to a nervous breakdown.

In response to being a big old lying loser that lies, Stinker of course said, “in actuality I won the case and my brother will be compelled by the Court in due course to repay considerable sums of money back to the businesses.” Because every day is Upside Down Day in Tory Sociocracyland.

In February this year, it was reported that Stinker is being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner over lobbying and failing to fully declare interests. He took 5 grand via his local Conservative association from a firm after raising its tax issues with a minister following a 2019 trip to the firm's Ghanaian teak plantation. Stinker said it was all “fully declared”.

The 2019 trip cost £3,300 and was paid by the company. He previously claimed he was a director of the timber firm, then paid £12,000 per year to advise it, but now claims the role has always been unpaid. He first listed the 12K in the June 2020 edition of the register of members’ financial interests, where it was repeated for some time. The teak company head Mark Hogg claims never to have paid Stinker.

So the interests register is the liar, and he did it all, years of work, travelling and lobbying, for the non-constituent firm, out of the goodness of his own heart. What a zero! Sorry, hero.

Tory ways of thinking: as long as you declare it, it doesn’t matter how dodgy it is, because look! Much open very transparency. But also if you vanish it — the meeting minutes of Brexit talks with dark money thinktanks, the WhatsApp convos, the incriminating party pictures — it never happened guvnor.

Usually at this stage I’d look at an MPs voting record and financial disclosures, but honestly, what’s the point? The one thing that stands out for me is that Stinker has loyalty to no one but Stinker, and the pound sterling: not his Crime Minister, not his family, certainly not his constituents, who nonetheless keep voting for him.

Stinker occasionally does something surprisingly decent, like sticking up for the wrongly-pilloried post office managers, but I’m no longer able to write about it due to a nasty pong making me feel all dizzy.

Verdict: RANCID TORY. Even for a Tory.

This takes a long time to do, but in the age of being bombarded with information and scandal so we can’t possibly keep up, I feel it’s important to collect public knowledge about one public person into one place. If you find it to be a public service but don’t want a paid, repeating newsletter subscription, you could help me get a new protest outfit together one time. The old one is covered in Tory tears.
https://ko-fi.com/5by5creativity

Previous dissections can be found on Twitter. I think it’s easier for you to read them here from now on than in disjointed threads. Next week: Penny Mordaunt.

1. Nigel Adams -