Nadine Dorries rails at ‘posh boy’ Rishi Sunak and claims she was ‘bullied’ out of peerage
Nadine Dorries has claimed Rishi Sunak deliberately acted to stop her from getting a peerage and is “not telling the truth” about what happened.
Speaking to Piers Morgan on TalkTV, the Boris Johnson loyalist and former culture secretary vented at the Prime Minister amid a war of words over Johnson’s resignation honours list.
Ms Dorries said she was repeatedly assured by the former prime minister and others that she would get a peerage – but quit as a Tory MP on Friday when it became clear her name would not be included.
Mr Sunak said the decision was made by the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC) and that he was “wasn’t prepared to do” what Boris Johnson asked and intervene on the issue.
Asked who she believes had stopped her peerage, Ms Dorries said: “The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. He, very cleverly of course, used his political secretary James Forsyth to do the heavy lifting, but obviously, he works for Rishi Sunak.”
She added: “I know why they did this, they did this because they wanted to avoid a by-election. If they’d worked with me, we could have had this by-election at a time suitable to them.
“Instead, they blocked me, put up a wall of silence and then stopped it happening… it was pretty stupid, actually, if they thought they were being clever and avoiding by-elections.”
Ms Dorries claimed Downing Street had failed to pass on information from HOLAC that MPs would not be permitted to get peerages unless they first pledge to quit the Commons, which she would have been happy to do.
Rubbishing Mr Sunak’s public statements, she accused him of “using language and words in order to deceive” about the chain of events, and claimed Downing Street had since “lied” about what happened.
Ms Dorries, who was MP for Mid Bedfordshire, also gave a detailed account of a private meeting between Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak last week.
She said: “Boris said to Rishi, ‘You just need to ask for re-vetting,’ which would take a matter of days. Rishi used very weasel words. He said to Boris Johnson, ‘Whatever list HOLAC send back to me, I will sign off.’
“Boris left that meeting with the impression that Sunak’s political secretary was going to ask for the re-vetting and then Rishi would sign it off, but Rishi… knew a situation had been engineered where my name would not be on the list.”
Ms Dorries, an unwavering supporter of Johnson, said she was “100 per cent” confident the ex-PM had not lied to her when he assured her that Mr Sunak would push her peerage through.
She said that the Chief Whip only informed her “30 minutes before the list was published” that her name was not on it, after she had been tipped off by a journalist.
She added: “It was the sheer audacity of the Chief Whip, thinking that at my age, having worked in Parliament for 21 years, having been a minister during Covid and a secretary of state, that he can dangle out to me some kind of stick and carrot, ‘Be a good girl and we’ll make sure something is sorted for you in future,’ which is basically what he was saying to me. That for me, at that moment, was what made me make my decision to resign.”
Ms Dorries said she had hoped to “shatter the class ceiling” by joining the House of Lords, adding: “I am broken-hearted, not just for me, but for everybody who comes from a background like mine.
“It kind of breaks my heart, because this story is about a girl from Liverpool who worked every day of her life, had something offered to her that people from that background don’t get offered, removed by two privileged posh boys who went to Winchester and Oxford.
“Taken away, duplicitously and cruelly. It was upsetting, and it was upsetting for everybody who thinks they could be that person.
“You come to a point in life when you can’t allow people to bully you, as I’ve just been bullied by No 10, you have to stand up for yourself. It was a painful decision.”
