With just over a week left until the Tory leadership race concludes, the endorsements are rolling in. While a selection of new backers have rowed in behind Kemi Badenoch in recent days, Robert Jenrick’s campaign has not been devoid of last minute supporters. His former boss Suella Braverman has today announced she will be supporting her former immigration minister – and she’s not the only ex-cabinet secretary throwing her weight behind Team Rob. In big news this morning, one-time culture secretary Nadine Dorries has revealed she will be backing Jenrick.
Taking to the august pages of the Daily Mail, Dorries has left readers reeling with her announcement that she will not in fact lend Badenoch her support. Lauding Jenrick for having ‘marched willingly into the sound of media gunfire in order to defend the [Tory] government’, Dorries penned a gushing tribute in today’s paper:
The Conservatives need to choose the best possible leader – not only to put an end to my own bad dreams, but to shake the entire party from its own collective nightmare, which began when they got rid of Boris in 2022. Our next leader needs two things: the ability to heal the party and the force of personality to take on Keir Starmer and his socialist friends. Only Robert Jenrick can supply both of these.
He is a man of conviction – and in politics these days, that quality is as rare as a dinosaur egg.
In a move that will shock, er, none of her regular readers, Dorries was not quite as generous about Jenrick’s rival. Blasting Badenoch over her lacking policy plan, the Boris ally fumed:
If Rob has been honest and frank about what our party needs, he is in sharp contrast to his rival Kemi Badenoch, who has barely uttered a word about policy. At a time when Tories need more than ever to unify, I’m afraid that Kemi, who even her most ardent supporters would describe as abrasive, would bring yet more division, leading us back to all the in-fighting, chaos and psychodrama to which we have subjected ourselves – and, worse, the voters – in recent years.
If only one politician had jotted down their interpretation of all that infighting in a handy book, eh? Given Dorries was calling for Badenoch to be ‘disqualified‘ from the contest at the most recent Tory party conference, Mr S reckons the ex-politician knows a thing or two about psychodrama…
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