There has never been any love lost between Nadine Dorries and Rishi Sunak. The former holds the latter responsible for bringing down Boris Johnson and has made her feelings clear in multiple angry tweets. During last summer’s leadership race, she attacked him for his expensive clothes and shoes; she complained that his premiership had seen Johnson’s legacy washed ‘down the drain.’
And today Dorries has given Sunak one last leaving present: announcing her intention to immediately quit the Commons and trigger a by-election in her safe seat of Mid-Bedfordshire. In 2019, the Tories won here with a majority of 24,000. But Labour are currently 15 points ahead in the polls and in last month’s elections Dorries’ local party lost overall control of Central Bedfordshire.
That means that Sunak now faces the risk of losing a true blue seat that has voted Tory since the Wall Street Crash of 1929. One MP on the right of the party has already told Steerpike that ‘If we lose that, it opens the question of Sunak’s leadership.’
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