Nadine Dorries proclaims resignation and launches scathing assault on Rishi Sunak
Here is Nadine Dorries’
“Dear Prime Minister,
“It has been the best honour and privilege of my life to have served the nice individuals of Mid Bedfordshire as their MP for eighteen years and I rely myself blessed to have labored in Westminster for nearly 1 / 4 of a century. Despite what some within the media and also you your self have implied, my workforce of caseworkers and I’ve continued to work for my constituents faithfully and diligently to today.
“When I arrived in Mid Bedfordshire in 2005, I inherited a Conservative majority of 8,000. Over five elections this has increased to almost 25,000, making it one of the safest seats in the country. A legacy I am proud of.
“During my time as a Member of Parliament, I’ve served as a again bencher, a invoice Committee Chair, a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State earlier than changing into Minister of State within the Department of Health and Social Care in the course of the Covid disaster, after which I used to be appointed as Secretary of State on the division of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport. The provide to proceed in my Cabinet function was prolonged to me by your predecessor, Liz Truss, and I’m grateful in your private telephone name on the morning you appointed your cupboard in October, even when I declined to take the decision.
“As politicians, one of the greatest things we can do is to empower people to have opportunities to achieve their aspirations and to help them to change their lives for the better. In DHSC I championed meaningful improvements to maternity and neonatal safety. I launched the women’s health strategy and pushed forward a national evidence-based trial for Group B Strep testing in pregnant women with the aim to reduce infant deaths. When I resigned as Secretary of State for DCMS I was able to thank the professional, dedicated, and hard-working civil servants for making our department the highest performing in Whitehall. We worked tirelessly to strengthen the Online Safety Bill to protect young people, froze the BBC licence fee, included the sale of Channel 4 into the Media Bill to protect its long-term future and led the world in imposing cultural sanctions when Putin invaded Ukraine.
“I labored with and inspired the tech sector, to look out untaught skills akin to artistic and demanding considering in disadvantaged communities providing those that confronted a life on low unskilled pay or advantages, entry to increased paid employment and social mobility. What most of the CEOs I spoke to within the tech sector and enterprise leaders actually needed was significant regulatory reform from you as chancellor to allow firms not solely to ascertain within the UK, however to checklist on the London Stock Exchange quite than New York. You flashed your gleaming smile in your Prada footwear and Savile Row go well with from behind a digital camera, however you simply weren’t listening. All they acquired in return have been platitudes and a speech illustrating how great life was in California. London is now dropping its attraction as extra UK-based firms search higher itemizing alternatives within the US. That, Prime Minister, is fully all the way down to you.
“Long before my resignation announcement, in July 2022, I had advised the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, of my intention to step down. Senior figures in the party, close allies of yours, have continued to this day to implore me to wait until the next general election rather than inflict yet another damaging by-election on the party at a time when we are consistently twenty points behind in the polls.
“Having witnessed first-hand, as Boris Johnson after which Liz Truss have been taken down, I made a decision that the British individuals had a proper to know what was taking place of their title. Why is it that we have now had 5 Conservative Prime Ministers since 2010, with not one of many earlier 4 having left workplace as the results of dropping a normal election? That is a democratic deficit which the mom of parliaments ought to be deeply ashamed of and which, as you and I do know, is the results of the machinations of a small group of people embedded deep on the centre of the occasion and Downing St.
“To start with, my investigations focused on the political assassination of Boris Johnson, but as I spoke to more and more people – and I have spoken to a lot of people, from ex-Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers both ex and current through all levels of government and Westminster and even journalists – a dark story emerged which grew ever more disturbing with each person I spoke to.
“It grew to become clear to me as I labored that remaining as a again bencher was incompatible with publishing a guide which exposes how the democratic course of on the coronary heart of our occasion has been corrupted. As I uncovered this alarming scenario I knew, such have been the forces ranged in opposition to me, that I used to be grateful to retain my parliamentary privilege till right this moment. And, as you additionally know Prime Minister, these forces are right this moment essentially the most highly effective figures within the land. The onslaught in opposition to me even included the weird spectacle of the Cabinet Secretary claiming (with out proof) to a choose committee that he had reported me to the Whips and Speakers workplace (not solely have neither workplace been in a position to affirm this was true, however they haven’t any energy to behave, as he nicely is aware of). It is unquestionably as clear a breach of Civil Service impartiality as you could possibly want to see.
“But worst of all has been the spectacle of a Prime Minister demeaning his office by opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy against one of his own MPs. You failed to mention in your public comments that there could be no writ moved for a by-election over summer. And that the earliest any by-election could take place is at the end of September. The clearly orchestrated and almost daily personal attacks demonstrates the pitifully low level your Government has descended to.
“It is a modus operandi established by your allies which has focused Boris Johnson, transferred to Liz Truss and now moved on to me. But I’ve not been a Prime Minister. I don’t have safety or safety. Attacks from individuals, led by you, declared open season on myself and the previous weeks have resulted within the police having to go to my house and get in touch with me on various events on account of threats to my individual.
“Since you took office a year ago, the country is run by a zombie Parliament where nothing meaningful has happened. What exactly has been done or have you achieved? You hold the office of Prime Minister unelected, without a single vote, not even from your own MPs. You have no mandate from the people and the Government is adrift. You have squandered the goodwill of the nation, for what?
“And what a distinction it’s now since 2019, when Boris Johnson received an eighty-seat majority and a better share of the vote share than Tony Blair within the Labour landslide victory of ’97. We have been a mere 5 factors behind on the day he was faraway from workplace. Since you grew to become Prime Minister, his manifesto has been fully deserted. We can not merely disregard the democratic selection of the citizens, take away each the Prime Minister and the manifesto commitments they voted for after which anticipate to return to the individuals within the hope that they’ll proceed to unquestioningly help us. They have company, they’ll use it.
“Levelling up has been discarded and with it, those deprived communities it sought to serve. Social care, ready to be launched, abandoned along with the hope of all of those who care for the elderly and the vulnerable. The Online Safety Bill has been watered down. BBC funding reform, the clock run down. The Mental Health Act, timed out. Defence spending, reduced. Our commitment to net zero, animal welfare and the green issues so relevant to the planet and voters under 40, squandered. As Lord Goldsmith wrote in his own resignation letter, because you simply do not care about the environment or the natural world. What exactly is it you do stand for?
“You have elevated Corporation tax to 25 per cent, taking us to the extent of the best tax take since World War two at 75 per cent of GDP, and you’ve got fully failed in lowering unlawful immigration or delivering on the advantages of Brexit. The bonfire of EU laws, swerved. The Windsor framework settlement, a useless duck, introduced into existence by shady guarantees of future preferment with grubby rewards and potential gongs to MPs. Stormont continues to be not sitting.
“Disregarding your own chancellor, last week you took credit for reducing inflation, citing your ‘plan’. There has been no budget, no new fiscal measures, no debate, there is no plan. Such statements take the British public for fools. The decline in the price of commodities such as oil and gas, the eased pressure on the supply of wheat and the increase in interest rates by the Bank of England are what has taken the heat out of the economy and reduced inflation. For you to personally claim credit for this was disingenuous at the very least.
“It is a proven fact that there isn’t any affection for Keir Starmer out on the doorstep. He doesn’t have the successful X issue qualities of a Thatcher, a Blair, or a Boris Johnson, and sadly, Prime Minister, neither do you. Your actions have left some 200 or extra of my MP colleagues to face an electoral tsunami and the lack of their livelihoods, as a result of in your impatience to develop into Prime Minister you place your private ambition above the steadiness of the nation and our economic system. Bewildered, we glance in useless for the grand political imaginative and prescient for the individuals of this nice nation to carry on to, that may make all this disruption and subsequent inertia worthwhile, and we discover completely nothing.
“I shall take some comfort from explaining to people exactly how you and your allies achieved this undemocratic upheaval in my book. I am a proud working-class Conservative which is why the Levelling Up agenda was so important to me. I know personally how effective a strong and helping hand can be to lift someone out of poverty and how vision, hope and opportunity can change lives. You have abandoned the fundamental principles of Conservatism. History will not judge you kindly.
“I shall right this moment inform the Chancellor of my intention to take the Chiltern Hundreds, enabling the writ to be moved on September the 4th for the by-election you’re so desperately in search of to happen.
“Yours sincerely,
“Nadine Dorries”