Nadine Dorries has by no means forgiven the Conservative Social gathering for ousting her hero Boris Johnson, on whom she continues to lavish reward.
Now she’s taken her revenge on the Tories by declaring her assist for one more charismatic political chief: Reform UK’s Nigel Farage.
After all, the ex-MP dubbed “Mad Nad” by Labour MPs when she was in Parliament has one factor in widespread along with her new get together chief.
Nadine Dorries was tradition secretary underneath Boris Johnson. Pic: PA
They’ve each appeared on I am a Celeb… Get Me Out Of Right here!, Dorries in 2012, with out permission, for which she had the Conservative whip withdrawn.
And Farage went into the jungle in 2023. So maybe the pair can now fondly recall consuming pigs’ testicles, fish eyes, worms and crocodile anus. Or maybe not.
“The Tory get together is lifeless,” she declared within the Each day Mail. “Its members now have to suppose the unthinkable and look to the longer term.”
Useless? Just like the lifeless parrot within the well-known Monty Python sketch? “No, it isn’t, it is resting,” Tory loyalists will little doubt declare. Not totally convincingly at current, nonetheless.
However when Nadine Dorries talks about Conservatives pondering the unthinkable, is she advocating a pact with Reform UK or extra defections? It is not clear.
One other intriguing query: does the Dorries defection enhance the potential of Reform UK touchdown their largest catch, the Tories’ largest beast in exile, Boris Johnson?
Unlikely. Mr Johnson has mentioned one of the best ways for the Conservatives to counter Farage is to disregard him and never point out him. Sound recommendation for the Tories and Labour, many would say.
Learn extra:
Nadine Dorries becomes latest Tory to defect to Reform
Nadine Dorries stays a detailed ally of Boris Johnson
Dorries was so dedicated to Boris that again in 2016 she sobbed on the information convention when he bottled it and introduced he would not stand within the management contest after David Cameron give up following his Brexit referendum humiliation.
She by no means had any time for Cameron. In 2012 she denounced the then PM and his chancellor George Osborne as “two smug posh boys who do not know the value of milk”.
And when she give up the Commons she launched a “posh boy” assault on Rishi Sunak, claiming that as chancellor “you flashed your gleaming smile in your Prada sneakers and Savile Row go well with”, delivered “platitudes” and spoke about “how fantastic life was in California”.
Although a controversial determine, she does have her followers and supporters, who declare that from a working-class background – like Angela Rayner, anybody? – she’s achieved nice successes inside and outdoors politics.
Nadine’s defection was introduced on the eve of Reform’s convention in Birmingham. Pic: PA
Her novels are massively profitable, for example, and have earned her some huge cash. However she missed out on the peerage she claims Boris Johnson promised her. Boris Johnson? Damaged promise? By no means, absolutely.
But within the years after he was ousted, Dorries has remained so dedicated to her not-so-secret crush that she wrote a e-book entitled The Political Assassination Of Boris Johnson.
It was filled with elaborate conspiracy theories claiming a secret Tory cabal, together with Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings introduced down her hero.
She even claimed Sunak plotted to bring down Johnson by conspiring with a “scary particular person” she codenamed Dr No, after the sinister Bond villain.
So simply how huge a prize is Dorries’ defection for Reform UK, then? Her I am a Celeb jaunt, her novels and her TV chat exhibits means she passes the well-known take a look at.
For many of her political profession, nonetheless, she was a maverick backbencher. It was Johnson who shocked MPs by appointing her to his cupboard as tradition secretary.
However by the point she give up as a Conservative MP in 2023, plunging the get together into an pointless by-election which it duly misplaced, she was already an absentee MP.
She hadn’t spoken within the Commons for greater than a 12 months and had solely voted six instances in 12 months. Constituents claimed they hadn’t seen her “in years”.
In her Mid Bedfordshire constituency in Johnson’s 2019 election triumph she had a majority of virtually 25,000. But within the by-election after she give up Labour received with a swing of greater than 20%.
In current months, Dorries has written in her Each day Mail columns about dropping three stone by taking the burden loss drug Mounjaro.
However she says what’s been troublesome and agonising for the previous 12 months is her determination to depart the Conservative Social gathering after greater than 30 years.
