Nadine Dorries can’t confirm she will vote Conservative at next general election as by-election campaigning kicks off
Nadine Dorries has refused to say whether she will vote Conservative at the next general election after finally resigning as an MP.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats hit the campaign trail in Mid Bedfordshire hours after the former Tory culture secretary stood down on Saturday, triggering another headache for Prime Minister in the form of a by-election.
In a fiery resignation letter, Ms Dorries accused the prime minister of “demeaning his office by opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy” against her.
Read more: Nadine Dorries’ resignation letter in full
The former minister has now refused to say she will vote for the Conservative Party at the next general election, while insisting the Tories can’t win under Mr Sunak’s leadership.
She told TalkTV it is “very, very unlikely” the Conservatives will win a majority with Mr Sunak.
And asked if she will vote Tory, the outgoing MP said: “You’re asking me a question I don’t want to answer.”
Ms Dorries described the Conservative Party as “a mess” and “broken”.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats have wasted no time in stepping up their campaigns in Mid Bedfordshire, with both parties already out in the constituency just hours after Ms Dorries stepped down.
Veterans minister Johnny Mercer today said it is “good news” for the people of Mid Bedfordshire that a by-election can now take place.
Nadine Dorries is reported to have been removed from Boris Johnson’s honours list.
However, he said he “doesn’t agree” with the former minister that the country is run by a “zombie parliament”.
Ms Dorries, a key ally of Mr 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 yet been able to take place.
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The Tory MP said she was delaying her exit to investigate why she was refused a seat in the House of Lords.
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said he is “increasingly confident we have a really good chance” of overturning Ms Dorries’ 25,000 majority in the constituency.
He is hoping his party can pull off another unexpected victory after flipping a 19,000 Tory majority in Somerton and Frome in July.
A sign calling for Nadine Dorries to quit hung outside a local train station station. Photo by Jez Darr
Sir Ed told the BBC: “It’s clear that the people of Mid Bedfordshire feel the Conservative Party is out of trust and they see the Liberal Democrats as the main challenger.”
The Lib Dems came third in Mid Bedfordshire at the 2019 general election, with 8,000 votes.
Labour, which came second with 14,000 votes, believes it is best placed to seize the traditionally safe Tory seat.
The party’s Mid Bedfordshire campaign lead Peter Kyle told Sky News: “We are actually in a great position to win this seat in what would be an historic by-election victory.”
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Nadine Dorries launches attack on PM after handing in resignation letter
Labour chairwoman Anneliese Dodds described a “morning of relief” for people in Mid Bedfordshire after the resignation of the the former minister. She said her party could be in “pole position” to take the seat.
What happens now she has resigned?
Ms Dorries is expected to leave her seat on Tuesday after notifying the chancellor of her intention to do so on Saturday.
Jeremy Hunt is expected to facilitate her exit from the House of Commons by appointing her to be Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern on the first working day after the bank holiday.
This will enable a motion called a “writ” to be moved when parliament returns on 4 September.
The deal was announced in response to the White House’s recent policy strategy to make the United States the AI capital of the world.
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Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has told Sky News that councils that believe they don’t have a problem with grooming gangs are “idiots” – as she denied Elon Musk influenced the decision to have a national inquiry on the subject.
The minister said: “I don’t follow Elon Musk’s advice on anything although maybe I too would like to go to Mars.
“Before anyone even knew Elon Musk’s name, I was working with the victims of these crimes.”
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Elon Musk. Pic: Reuters
Mr Musk had called Ms Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” in one of a series of inflammatory posts on X in January and said she should go to jail.
Mr Musk, then a close aide of US President Donald Trump, sparked a significant political row with his comments – with the Conservative Party and Reform UK calling for a new public inquiry into grooming gangs.
At the time, Ms Phillips denied a request for a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham on the basis that it should be done at a local level.
But the government announced a national inquiry after Baroness Casey’s rapid audit on grooming gangs, which was published in June.
Asked if she thought there was, in the words of Baroness Casey, “over representation” among suspects of Asian and Pakistani men, Ms Phillips replied: “My own experience of working with many young girls in my area – yes there is a problem. There are different parts of the country where the problem will look different, organised crime has different flavours across the board.
“But I have to look at the evidence… and the government reacts to the evidence.”
Ms Phillips also said the home secretary has written to all police chiefs telling them that data collection on ethnicity “has to change”, to ensure that it is always recorded, promising “we will legislate to change the way this [collection] is done if necessary”.
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Operation Beaconport has since been established, led by the National Crime Agency (NCA), and will be reviewing more than 1,200 closed cases of child sexual exploitation.
Ms Phillips revealed that at least “five, six” councils have asked to be a part of the national review – and denounced councils that believed they don’t have a problem with grooming gangs as “idiots”.
“I don’t want [the inquiry] just to go over places that have already had inquiries and find things the Casey had already identified,” she said.
She confirmed that a shortlist for a chair has been drawn up, and she expects the inquiry to be finished within three years.
Ms Phillips’s comments come after she announced £426,000 of funding to roll out artificial intelligence tools across all 43 police forces in England and Wales to speed up investigations into modern slavery, child sex abuse and county lines gangs.
Some 13 forces have access to the AI apps, which the Home Office says have saved more than £20m and 16,000 hours for investigators.
The apps can translate large amounts of text in foreign languages and analyse data to find relationships between suspects.
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