Top Tory Johnny Mercer has said Nadine Dorries added value to Parliament and the Conservative Party, but it is “regrettable” she chose to get so personal in her damning letter of resignation.
Veterans minister Johnny Mercer joked “I didn’t really get all the way through it as it went on quite a while”, but said some of her criticisms were wrong, especially on defence spending.
Mr Mercer said there is now a need to “move forward” but conceded Ms Dorries had historically added “real value” to Parliament.
“I value all of my colleagues, and their stories and backgrounds they represent.”
He warned: “No one’s bigger than the party – you’re talking to a guy who’s been sacked from Government twice – no one’s bigger than the party, the party is there in the national interest and is there to deliver for the people for Britain”.
Mr Mercer conceded that “from time to time everybody will feel unhappy” with the Government, but argued everyone is “tired” of “raking over the coals of Boris Johnson’s premiership”.
“It’s regrettable that Nadine’s gone down the personal route, but that is her right. She’s been a Conservative MP for some time.”
Ms Dorries took multiple personal swipes at Rishi Sunak in her resignation letter, published last night in the Mail on Sunday.
She warned “history will not judge you kindly” and blasted him for failing to achieve anything in office.
“You have no mandate from the people, and the Government is adrift. You have squandered the goodwill of the nation, for what?”
“It is a fact that there is no affection for Keir Starmer out on the doorstep. He does not have the winning X factor qualities of a Thatcher, a Blair, or a Boris Johnson, and sadly, Prime Minister, neither do you.
“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.”
Reacting to her flamboyant resignation, Tory MP Bob Neill accused Ms Dorries of presiding over a “theatre of the absurd” over her protracted resignation.
Mr Neill told Times Radio “She had become an embarrassment”.
“She was a pretty useless culture secretary and she finally created her own theatre of the absurd. It is so obviously motivated by personal bitterness and bile and has got no credibility at all.
“To accuse the prime minister, who is doing his best to get back to sound economic policy … of abandoning fundamental principles, really takes the biscuit, of all the political absurdity I’ve heard.”
