Rishi Sunak is jetting off on holiday to California this afternoon, but it seems the Prime Minister couldn’t resist a dig at Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries before he departs. Dorries, a close ally of Boris Johnson, has refused to quit parliament, despite saying in June that she would stand down as the MP for Mid Bedfordshire ‘with immediate effect’.
When LBC host Nick Ferrari asked Sunak for his ‘view of Nadine’, the PM responded: ‘I think people deserve to have an MP that represents them wherever they are…just making sure that your MP is engaging with you, representing you, whether that’s speaking in parliament or being present in their constituencies.’
He added: ‘that’s a job of an MP and all MPs should be held to that standard.’
Dorries has not spoken in parliament since July last year
Ferrari then asked directly whether Dorries was ‘failing’, to which Sunak said that ‘at the moment people (in her seat) aren’t being properly represented’.
Mr S thinks Rishi might have a point. Dorries has not spoken in parliament since July last year. And despite her vow to quit, Dorries says that she is busy conducting an investigation into the ‘sinister forces’ that blocked her from receiving a peerage as part of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list.
Last week, Dorries received a letter from Flitwick Town Council in her constituency of Mid-Bedfordshire, asking her to step down for failing constituents. The council’s town clerk, Stephanie Stanley, wrote: ‘Rather than representing constituents, the council is concerned that your focus appears to have been firmly on your television show, upcoming book and political manoeuvres to embarrass the government for not appointing you to the House of Lords’.
Unfortunately for Sunak – and Dorries’ constituents – it seems that Nadine does not plan to stop being his perpetual source of annoyance any time soon. Her new book ‘The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson’ is coming out in September, detailing the ‘treachery and deceit’ at the heart of government that brought down Johnson.
Coincidentally, its release date is just prior to the Conservative party conference. Talk about going out with a bang…
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