Tories in crisis
Johnson confidante resigns and deals out to Sunak
08/26/2023, 10:09 p.m
The governing Conservatives are tearing themselves apart. After ex-Prime Minister Johnson had already resigned from parliament, another confidante is now following suit. In the exit, Nadine Dorries once again vigorously against her own party leader.
Accompanied by sharp criticism of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a close confidante of Boris Johnson has resigned from the British Parliament. MP Nadine Dorries wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that she had submitted her resignation. Dorries announced the move a few weeks ago and was criticized for not following through with the announcement.
Her resignation shows the inner turmoil of the conservative Tories. The former culture minister used the opportunity to settle accounts with the current party and government leader Sunak. She accused him of campaigning against her. “The clearly orchestrated and almost daily personal attacks demonstrate the pathetic level to which your government has descended,” she wrote in a letter published by the Daily Mail newspaper. She also criticized: “Since you took office a year ago, the country has been ruled by a zombie parliament in which nothing meaningful has happened.”
Another loss of mandate is imminent
Amid poor polling numbers, the British Conservatives are now facing another by-election in Dorries’ Mid Bedforshire constituency. A few weeks ago, the Tories lost two of their previous three mandates in a by-election.
A few weeks ago, Dorries accused Sunak of blocking her planned appointment to the House of Lords for life. The prime minister and his advisors are “privileged bigwigs” and have prevented her, “a girl born into poverty in Liverpool”, from moving into the upper house. Dorries herself had been severely reprimanded because she and others had criticized the investigations of a committee into the “Partygate” affair and had insulted the committee as a “kangaroo court” (arbitrary tribunal) and spoke of a “witch hunt” on Johnson.
The committee had previously found that Johnson had repeatedly lied to Parliament in the Downing Street lockdown party scandal. Johnson anticipated the recommendation to suspend him from the House of Commons for 90 days by resigning from his mandate.