The Telegraph's Simon Heffer threatens to stand against Sir Alan Haselhurst

9.45pm update: Iain Dale has posted the apology and promise to pay back £12,000 issued by Sir Alan Haselhurst this morning and suggest that Simon Heffer's campaign therefore ends before it even started...

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Simon Heffer, the Daily Telegraph associate editor and columnist, is threatening to stand against Sir Alan Haselhurst, the Saffron Walden MP and Deputy Speaker of the Commons, on an anti-sleaze ticket.

The paper is tonight reporting that Simon Heffer - a regular critic of Cameron from the Tory Right who has also been known to speak on a UKIP platform - will stand in Saffron Walden against Sir Alan if he does not repay the £12,000 in allowances he spent on gardening at his Essex home.

Mr Heffer, currently one of Sir Alan's constituents, writes:

“If he does not, between now and the opening of nominations for the general election, admit error, apologise, pay back the £12,000 and promise to behave, I shall stand against him as an independent. If Sir Alan thinks I am joking, I warn him I am not. I have backers and volunteers. I say this more in anger than in sorrow: we are all angry. Doesn’t he get it?”

Sir Alan could have expected to be a candidate for the Speakership, but the questions raised about his use of allowances are thought to have put paid to such ambitions.

At 71, he is the third oldest Conservative MP and may yet opt to stand down rather than fight another election.

Jonathan Isaby