Former culture secretary Nadine Dorries has finally resigned as an MP – more than 10 weeks after announcing her intention to quit – with a scathing attack on Rishi Sunak.
In Ms Dorries’ resignation letter, the staunch Boris Johnson ally accused the prime minister of “demeaning his office by opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy” against her.
The Conservative MP has faced intense pressure to formally resign, having previously insisted she would stay on until Mr Sunak’s government revealed documents on the decision to deny her a peerage in Mr Johnson’s honours list.
Her resignation will give Mr Sunak another headache, triggering a by-election in Mid-Bedfordshire which could be held as soon as September, hot on the heels of painful losses for the Tories in Yorkshire and Somerset, despite managing to cling to Mr Johnson’s former seat in Uxbridge.
Her resignation letter, published in the Daily Mail and running to more than 1,750 words, comes a day after the Liberal Democrats vowed to table a “Dosser Dorries” bill as soon as parliament returned to suspend her as an MP.
In a blistering attack, she wrote to the PM: “Since you took office a year ago, the country is run by a zombie Parliament where nothing meaningful has happened. What exactly has been done or have you achieved?
Taking aim at the circumstances of Mr Sunak’s hurried entry to No 10 following the collapse of Liz Truss’s brief premiership, months after losing to her in the Tory leadership contest, Ms Dorries said: “You hold the office of Prime Minister unelected, without a single vote, not even from your own MPs.
“You have no mandate from the people and the government is adrift. You have squandered the goodwill of the nation, for what?”
Nadine Dorries accused Rishi Sunak of abandoning “the fundamental principles of Conservatism”
(Getty Images)
She added: “I know personally how effective a strong and helping hand can be to lift someone out of poverty and how vision, hope and opportunity can change lives. You have abandoned the fundamental principles of Conservatism. History will not judge you kindly.”
Ms Dorries, who was first elected in 2005, insisted this week that she was still “working daily” for her constituents, despite having not spoken in the Commons for over a year or voting since April – after senior Tory MP Caroline Nokes accused her of “making a mockery” of her seat by refusing to resign.
Ms Dorries has been presenting a show on TalkTV since February, writes a column for the Daily Mail, and recently declared a £20,500 advance from publisher HarperCollins for an upcoming book about Mr Johnson’s “political assassination”.
By remaining as an MP over the summer, Ms Dorries will have earned at least two months’ worth of her £86,000 salary, amounting to more than £14,000 before tax.
In her letter, Ms Dorries claimed to have first advised Cabinet secretary Simon Case of her intention to resign in July 2022, but that close allies of Mr Sunak’s “have continued to this day to implore me to wait until the next general election rather than inflict yet another damaging by-election on the party”.
More follows…