Nadine Dorries sends resignation letter to PM – and launches scathing attack on him
Former Conservative minister Nadine Dorries has announced she is resigning, after months of criticism over her absence from the House of Commons.
In her resignation letter, the Tory MP accused Rishi Sunak of “demeaning his office by opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy” against her.
The letter to the prime minister said: “It has been the greatest honour and privilege of my life to have served the good people of Mid Bedfordshire as their MP for 18 years and I count myself blessed to have worked in Westminster for almost a quarter of a century.
“Despite what some in the media and you yourself have implied, my team of caseworkers and I have continued to work for my constituents faithfully and diligently to this day.”
The letter went on to say Mr Sunak had abandoned “the fundamental principles of Conservatism” and “history will not judge you kindly”.
Ms Dorries, a key ally of Boris Johnson, said she was resigning with “immediate effect” on 9 June after she failed to get a peerage in Mr Johnson’s resignation honours list.
But having not formally vacated her seat, a by-election has not been able to take place.
Ms Dorries said she was delaying her exit to investigate why she was refused a seat in the House of Lords, but many of her local Conservatives, constituents and fellow MPs accused her of “abandonning” the people of Mid Bedfordshire.
Both Flitwick and Shefford Town Council formally called for her to resign.
Following the letter, a Conservative Party spokesman said the party has already “selected a candidate and are ready for the by-election campaign”.
Dorries 'not pulling her punches' when it comes to Sunak
Liz Bates
@wizbates
She doesn’t pull her punches when it comes to Rishi Sunak.
And quite clearly the issue with the PM is absolutely at the heart of why she said back in June she was going to resign.
Nadine Dorries is the MP for Mid Bedfordshire. She really rose to prominence during Boris Johnson’s premiership, she served in his cabinet, but she was a real Boris Johnson loyalist to the end.
After Boris Johnson had left office, she was said to have been lined up by him, as one of his close allies, for a peerage.
In the end that peerage was blocked. Now we don’t know exactly what happened behind the scenes.
But at the time she accused current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of blocking her from entering the House of Lords. And she’s been very angry about that ever since.
She did when she stood down say that she was resigning with immediate effect. But she has made Rishi Sunak’s life much more difficult by carrying on for quite a long time after she said that and raising many questions about why she’s still sitting as a Conservative MP and taking the salary of an MP without formally submitting her resignation.
There has been a lot of pressure mounting on Nadine Dorries over the past few weeks, especially from her constituents, many of whom say they haven’t seen her for a long time.
Well that has changed today. We’ve been waiting for it for a long time, but Nadine Dorries has formally resigned today.
In it, Ms Dorries also accused Mr Sunak of leading attacks on her resulting in “the police having to visit my home and contact me on a number of occasions due to threats to my person”.
“The clearly orchestrated and almost daily personal attacks demonstrates the pitifully low level your government has descended to,” she wrote.
Attacking the prime minster’s record, she added: “Since you took office a year ago, the country is run by a zombie parliament where nothing meaningful has happened.
“You have no mandate from the people and the government is adrift. You have squandered the goodwill of the nation, for what?
“Your actions have left some 200 or more of my MP colleagues to face an electoral tsunami and the loss of their livelihoods, because in your impatience to become prime minister you put your personal ambition above the stability of the country and our economy.
“Bewildered, we look in vain for the grand political vision for the people of this great country to hold on to, that would make all this disruption and subsequent inertia worthwhile, and we find absolutely nothing.”