Louise Mensch can't be having much of a holiday in Florida.

The Tory MP, who was forced to apologise to Piers Morgan after linking him to phone hacking, has been tweeting throughout the day after the journalist who challenged her over her drug-taking past surfaced this afternoon.

Perhaps I should say that David Jones has (sort of) surfaced. Jones, who challenged Mensch to say whether she had taken drugs with the violinist Nigel Kennedy while she worked at EMI in her twenties, appears to have sent an identical email to journalists. We were furnished with his email address (davidjones1232@gmail.com) by Mensch's PR adviser Tom Steiner. I blogged about this on Friday evening.

David Allen Green blogged at 5.30pm this afternoon that Helen Lewis-Hasteley, assistant editor of the New Statesman, received a reply from Jones after sending him an email. I received an identical email – the only difference was it began Dear Nick, as opposed to Dear Helen – at 2.18pm this afternoon. This is what it says:

Dear Nick Thank-you for your message. The people who passed me this information about Mrs Louise Mensch were concerned that: 1. Louise Mensch supports the criminalisation of the drugs trade. They feel that Mrs Mensch may have further questions to answer with regard to the type of drugs she took. Their feeling is that the blogger jd-baker summed up the situation better than any other report from yesterday or today. "The only gripe I have with Louise Mensch is that she still supports criminalisation of the drugs trade. As such she is saying that young people such as her former self should have their lives ruined by a criminal conviction, and possible custodial sentence. Would her life have panned out in the same way with such a tarnish on her record? If not then how can she condone this happening to other people? In supporting criminalisation she sadly defends a policy that has failed to effectively tackle addiction rates, or associated criminal behaviour." 2. Louise Mensch is part of a committee looking into law-breaking. The taking of drugs is also serious illegal activity, one that kills and destroys millions of lives each year. It is encouraging we live in a country with a free press, where illegal activity can be published. With thanks

The blog cited by Jones was posted today on the site: A blog from Royd by James Baker. So Jones is saying that the views of the "people" who prompted him to email Mensch on 22 July were summed up in a blog posted eight days later.

Mensch issued a quick response to the Jones email. This is what she told David Allen Green:

This is wholly disingenuous. My comments on drug use were posted yesterday, after this expose; as a search of Hansard will confirm, I have never spoken about drugs prior to this story. Secondly, what possible relevance does "Mr. Jones" points 2 or 3 in his email to me have to this excuse? Thirdly, in using the name "David Jones" he is using the name of a well-known investigative journalist at the Daily Mail.* He additionally copied my Chief Whip, knowing who that person was and his email address, and the Chairman of my party. Those are actions of a journalist, who would understand such things. His defence of a "free press" is nonsense. Let him state which paper or magazine was proposing to publish this story and let him give his real name and a phone number to the rest of the press.

I've just sent another email to David Jones asking him to respond to Mensch's points.

Perhaps he will respond to Mensch with care. Nigel Kennedy told the Daily Telegraph that Mensch is a formidable opponent:

I am a socialist myself but do remember having some great times with my beautiful and very clever Right-wing friend when she was at EMI. Louise is pretty scary and I would warn anyone that it's not a good idea to mess with her.

Kennedy will have his moment in the limelight a week tonight when he plays Bach in a "live and unplugged" late night concert at the BBC Proms. Perhaps he'll use it as an opportunity to rally to the defence of his friend.

* I wrote this on Friday night about David Jones of the Daily Mail: