Former Tory chairman Grant Shapps demoted after series of social media gaffes

Tory party chairman Grant Shapps has been sacked from David Cameron's new cabinet after a series of social media revelations.

It was a particularly humiliating blow as he helped to deliver the first Tory parliamentary majority in 23 years. Shapps has also been demoted to the lesser role as minister of state at the Department for International Development.

Shapps had attended the cabinet as Tory co-chairman and as minister without portfolio at the Cabinet Office. His humiliation was compounded by the prime minister's decision to promote his fellow Tory co-chairman Lord Feldman - a friend from their Oxford days - to the post of full chairman of the party with a seat in the political cabinet.

The MP for Welwyn Hatfield has courted controversy, and just before the election campaign he was accused of editing the Wikipedia pages of his Conservative rivals. He also allegedly changed his own page to delete embarrassing references to his past.

Shapps categorically denied this, claiming he would complain to Wikipedia over the fact that one anonymous editor was being reported as "speaking as if it's Wikipedia itself" and "being somebody who is with authority".

And his team told the Jewish News that on one of the four occasions when changes were made, he was in synagogue for Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement).

He was also forced to admit he had "screwed up" over his denial that he held a second job posing as his multi-millionaire pseudonym Michael Green while also an MP in 2006.