Nadine Dorries’ resignation letter in full – as she accuses Rishi Sunak of whipping up a ‘public frenzy’ towards her
Nadine Dorries has introduced her resignation with a scathing assault on Rishi Sunak, accusing him of “demeaning his office by opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy” towards her.
The Tory MP for Mid Bedfordshire stated on Saturday she had submitted her resignation letter to the prime minister, publishing it within the Mail on Sunday.
Here is the textual content of the letter in full:
Dear Prime Minister,
It has been the best honour and privilege of my life to have served the nice folks of Mid Bedfordshire as their MP for eighteen years and I depend 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 at the present time.
When I arrived in Mid Bedfordshire in 2005, I inherited a Conservative majority of 8,000. Over 5 elections this has elevated to nearly 25,000, making it one of many most secure seats within the nation. A legacy I’m pleased with.
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 turning into Minister of State within the Department of Health and Social Care through 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 position was prolonged to me by your predecessor, Liz Truss, and I’m grateful on 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 many biggest issues we are able to do is to empower folks to have alternatives to realize their aspirations and to assist them to alter their lives for the higher. In DHSC I championed significant enhancements to maternity and neonatal security. I launched the ladies’s well being technique and pushed ahead a nationwide evidence-based trial for Group B Strep testing in pregnant girls with the intention to cut back toddler deaths. When I resigned as Secretary of State for DCMS I used to be capable of thank the skilled, devoted, and hard-working civil servants for making our division the best performing in Whitehall. We labored tirelessly to strengthen the Online Safety Bill to guard younger folks, froze the BBC licence payment, included the sale of Channel 4 into the Media Bill to guard 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 go looking out untaught abilities equivalent to inventive and demanding considering in disadvantaged communities providing those that confronted a life on low unskilled pay or advantages, entry to larger paid employment and social mobility. What lots of the CEOs I spoke to within the tech sector and enterprise leaders actually wished was significant regulatory reform from you as chancellor to allow corporations not solely to determine within the UK, however to listing 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 digicam, 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 corporations search higher itemizing alternatives within the U.S. That, Prime Minister, is solely right down to you.
Long earlier than my resignation announcement, in July 2022, I had suggested the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, of my intention to step down. Senior figures within the occasion, shut allies of yours, have continued to at the present time to implore me to attend till the subsequent common election quite than inflict one more damaging by-election on the occasion at a time once we are persistently twenty factors behind within the polls.
Having witnessed first-hand, as Boris Johnson after which Liz Truss have been taken down, I made a decision that the British folks had a proper to know what was taking place of their title. Why is it that we’ve got had 5 Conservative Prime Ministers since 2010, with not one of many earlier 4 having left workplace as the results of dropping a common 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 begin with, my investigations targeted on the political assassination of Boris Johnson, however as I spoke to increasingly more folks – and I’ve spoken to lots of people, from ex-Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers each ex and present by means of all ranges of presidency and Westminster and even journalists – a darkish story emerged which grew ever extra disturbing with every individual I spoke to.
It turned clear to me as I labored that remaining as a again bencher was incompatible with publishing a ebook which exposes how the democratic course of on the coronary heart of our occasion has been corrupted. As I uncovered this alarming state of affairs I knew, such have been the forces ranged towards me, that I used to be grateful to retain my parliamentary privilege till at the moment. And, as you additionally know Prime Minister, these forces are at the moment probably the most highly effective figures within the land. The onslaught towards 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 capable of verify this was true, however they haven’t any energy to behave, as he effectively is aware of). It is unquestionably as clear a breach of Civil Service impartiality as you possibly can want to see.
But worst of all has been the spectacle of a Prime Minister demeaning his workplace by opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy towards one in all his personal MPs. You failed to say in your public feedback that there could possibly be no writ moved for a by-election over summer season. And that the earliest any by-election may happen is on the finish of September. The clearly orchestrated and nearly day by day private assaults demonstrates the pitifully low degree 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 folks, led by you, declared open season on myself and the previous weeks have resulted within the police having to go to my residence and speak to me on a lot of events on account of threats to my individual.
Since you took workplace a 12 months in the past, the nation is run by a zombie Parliament the place nothing significant has occurred. What precisely has been performed or have you ever achieved? You maintain the workplace of Prime Minister unelected, with no single vote, not even from your personal MPs. You haven’t any mandate from the folks 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 gained an eighty-seat majority and a higher 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 turned Prime Minister, his manifesto has been utterly deserted. We can’t merely disregard the democratic selection of the citizens, take away each the Prime Minister and the manifesto commitments they voted for after which count on to return to the folks within the hope that they are going to proceed to unquestioningly assist us. They have company, they are going to use it.
Levelling up has been discarded and with it, these disadvantaged communities it sought to serve. Social care, able to be launched, deserted together with the hope of all of those that look after the aged and the susceptible. The Online Safety Bill has been watered down. BBC funding reform, the clock run down. The Mental Health Act, timed out. Defence spending, diminished. Our dedication to internet zero, animal welfare and the inexperienced points so related to the planet and voters underneath 40, squandered. As Lord Goldsmith wrote in his personal resignation letter, since you merely don’t care concerning the atmosphere or the pure world. What precisely 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 utterly 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 personal chancellor, final week you took credit score for lowering inflation, citing your ‘plan’. There has been no finances, no new fiscal measures, no debate, there is no such thing as a plan. Such statements take the British public for fools. The decline within the value of commodities equivalent to oil and gasoline, the eased strain on the availability of wheat and the rise in rates of interest by the Bank of England are what has taken the warmth out of the financial system and diminished inflation. For you to personally declare credit score for this was disingenuous on the very least.
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It is a proven fact that there is no such thing as a 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 grow to be Prime Minister you set your private ambition above the steadiness of the nation and our financial system. Bewildered, we glance in useless for the grand political imaginative and prescient for the folks 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 consolation from explaining to folks precisely the way you and your allies achieved this undemocratic upheaval in my ebook. I’m a proud working-class Conservative which is why the Levelling Up agenda was so essential to me. I do know personally how efficient a powerful and serving to hand may be to carry somebody out of poverty and the way imaginative and prescient, hope and alternative can change lives. You have deserted the elemental ideas of Conservatism. History won’t choose you kindly.
I shall at the 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 might be so desperately searching for to happen.
Yours sincerely,
Nadine Dorries