Plop! That was the sound of another rat leaving the sinking Tory ship as Nadine Dorries announced on her Talk TV show that she will quit parliament at the next election.
The former Culture Secretary and unashamed Boris Johnson fan joins a lengthening list of departing Tory MPs who have read the writing on the wall and know that inevitable defeat and years in opposition await after their appointment with the voters next year.
The only remaining question is the size of that defeat: will it simply be a narrow victory for Sir Keir Starmer’s reinvigorated Labour party? Or a wipeout on the scale of Tony Blair’s 1997 New Labour landslide that left the Tories out of power for more than a decade?
It is not only the wider public who have fallen out of love with the party
The omens don’t look good for the Tories. Labour are still streets ahead in the polls and yesterday’s by-election in the safe Labour seat of West Lancashire saw Sir Keir’s party retain the constituency with a swing of almost 11 per cent – their third straight by-election win.
Nadine Dorries has no doubts about why her party remains becalmed in the doldrums with no hint of revival on the horizon: the voters will not forgive or forget the knifing of Boris by his own MPs. In her statement announcing her departure she blamed the ‘infighting, lack of cohesion and…sheer stupidity’ of her Conservative colleagues who thought that the public would let them get away with deposing the man who secured them a bigger share of the vote than even Blair attained.
There is much merit in Dorries’ argument. And it is not only the wider public who have fallen out of love with the party. The seething resentment among many Tory members about the way that their hero Johnson was ousted was further compounded when their own choice of successor – Liz Truss – was similarly cast aside by the MPs who thought that they knew better.
This decision by Tory MPs has resulted in resignations among the Tory grass roots faithful, along with defections to the Reform UK party. A bloody-minded refusal to work for the Tories has arisen which will likely be reflected in miserable results in May’s local elections.
However grievous the sins of Boris Johnson over partygate and however premature the tax-cutting plans of Truss, ordinary Tories remain furious at the way that they were ousted. They certainly also have very little love for Rishi Sunak, their self-anointed successor. Taken together, these factors spell doom for the Tories, and there is little they can do to avert their fate.
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