Tag Archives: Nadine Dorries

Tory MPs try to condemn Partygate investigation as a witch hunt

Boris Johnson: regarding his honesty, public opinion tends to go against him, as this graphic shows.

Isn’t it scandalous that some Conservative MPs are trying to use their position and influence to pre-judge an investigation into whether Boris Johnson misled Parliament?

According to the BBC,

allies of the outgoing PM dismissed the investigation by the Commons Privileges Committee as a “witch hunt” and “rigged”.

The inquiry will examine whether he obstructed Parliament by telling it that pandemic rules had been followed [when in fact more than a dozen rule-breaking parties are known to have happened, with many more suspected].

The probe could lead to Mr Johnson facing a by-election to remain an MP, if it leads to his suspension from the Commons for more than 10 days.

Apparently the comments started flying after the committee said it would not have to prove that Johnson deliberately misled MPs to show he committed a “contempt of Parliament” by obstructing its work.

Johnson loyalist and Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said the “Machiavellian” inquiry was “the means to a by-election” and called on Tory MPs to “have no part in it”.

Environment Minister Lord Goldsmith, whom Mr Johnson made a peer in December 2019, said the inquiry was “clearly rigged” and an “obscene abuse of power”.

Backbench Tory MP Michael Fabricant also accused the committee of wanting to “get rid of Boris Johnson” and “changing the rules”.

In response,

one of the Tory MPs on the committee, Sir Bernard Jenkin, said the committee had a “duty” to carry out the inquiry and accused Ms Dorries of waging a “terrorist campaign to try and discredit the committee”.

So now, in a move to halt this internecine fighting within the Tory Party, chief whip Chris Heaton-Harris has demanded decorum:

“May I urge caution against any further comments in the media about the Privileges Committee and especially its Clerk and Members,” wrote Mr Heaton-Harris, who is in charge of party discipline.

“Invariably these comments will be misinterpreted by those who do not wish to help us.”

Johnson has denied deliberately misleading MPs. The committee – with a majority of Conservative MPs – has said it has not “prejudged” any aspect of its inquiry, and the parliamentary officials advising it are politically impartial.

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Tory MPs share doctored video of Starmer in abortive smear attempt

Here’s another tweet by ‘Mad Nad’ Nadine Dorries – which she could now more accurately use to describe herself.

Health minister Nadine Dorries, former Tory vice-chair Maria Caulfield and Lucy Allan have made an abortive attempt to discredit Labour leader Keir Starmer by sharing a misleading video created by far-right activists.

They quote-tweeted a video post that claimed to show Starmer explaining “why he didn’t prosecute grooming gangs”, when in fact he was explaining why he implemented reforms as the Director of Public Prosecutions.

A Labour source said: “This is a doctored video tweeted by far-right social media account. As a government minister, we hope Nadine Dorries acknowledges this and takes it down.”

Dorries and Allan have now deleted their posts, while Caulfield has deleted her Twitter account.

But the real question is how the three Tory MPs obtained the video in the first place: the original Twitter user – whose account is now deleted – has previously shared racist content.

The trio’s decision to post this anti-Starmer propaganda has been questioned by many on the social media, who point to the fact that the new Labour leader had just exposed false claims about Covid-19-related deaths in care homes by Boris Johnson:

(I think he means they’ll be asking anybody who retweeted their falsehood to retweet their apology.)

Perhaps more revealing is the fact that any reference to the prosecution of child grooming allegations in connection with Boris Johnson brings us back to his own – genuine – remarks, that the investigation into historical allegations of child abuse is “spaffing money up the wall” (an extremely unwise comment when one considers the meaning of the word “spaffing”):

So, while we wait for Mad Nad and Loathsome Lucy to delete their accounts, perhaps BoJob would like to explain why he wanted to stop investigations into child sexual abuse?

Source: Tory MPs share doctored video of Starmer promoted by far right – LabourList

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Window-lickin’ bad: Disability ‘hate tweet’ MP appointed mental health minister

Boris Johnson really does seem to have gone out of his way to offend the nation with his government appointments.

Disability campaigners are furious at his decision to make Nadine Dorries as the new minister for mental health after she published a disability hate tweet two years ago.

It stated:

A petition, calling for her to be removed, awaits your signature:

Anne Novis, chair of Inclusion London and an advisor on disability hate crime to the Metropolitan police, said the tweet made Dorries unfit to be minister for mental health.

She said the term “window lickers” was frequently discussed by trainers in disability equality training sessions, who explain how it originated as a term of abuse for people with Down’s syndrome or cerebral palsy because they often cannot control their tongues.

Now, she said, it tends to be used as a term to attack disabled people in general.

Novis said: “It indicates not only that Nadine Dorries would use such offensive language but also that her understanding would be very poor about issues faced by disabled people, including mental health issues.

“You wouldn’t accept it around racist, or religious or cultural difference; you just wouldn’t accept that sort of language and expect someone then to go into a post that is meant to be assisting those people.

“There would be no confidence in her. We would have no confidence in this person being a minister because of what she has brought across through her language.”

Read more: Anger over appointment of ‘disability hate tweet’ MP as mental health minister – Disability News Service

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Right-wing media are having trouble finding a new anti-Corbyn smear

Ian Bone (right) accosts Jacob Rees-Mogg and his family outside their Westminster home.

What a shame (I don’t think) – the anti-Corbyn express is running out of steam.

This week the big push was to link Mr Corbyn with one Ian Bone, a ‘Class War’ activist who accosted Jacob Rees-Mogg and his children outside the right-wing, Brexiter Tory’s home.

The Daily Mirror told us last week:

‘Class warrior’ Ian Bone led a small group who targeted the Old Etonian, his wife, their nanny and four of his six children outside their £5.6m home in Westminster.

A video posted on Tuesday night by the Class War group shows Mr Bone targeted Mr Rees-Mogg’s young children directly, telling them: “Your daddy’s a horrible person.”

Asking how much Mr Rees-Mogg pays his nanny, 71-year-old Mr Bone told the youngsters: “Daddy doesn’t pay her very much!

“Daddy says the minimum wage doesn’t count for anything!”

Mr Bone is friends with Jeremy Corbyn’s brother, Piers, and once claimed Andrew Fisher, a senior figure in the Labour leader’s office, supports their group, according to The Sun.

Propaganda site Guido Fawkes was quick to condemn the incident as a left wing ambush, and rabid Tory backbencher Nadine ‘Mad Nad’ Dorries leapt on the bandwagon by attributing it to “Corbyn cultists”. There was just one problem…

This problem:

Let us be perfectly clear: I am not happy with friends and relatives of a political figure being tarred by association with them. If you must condemn someone, it should be for what that person has done, not who they know or who their relatives happen to be.

So Mr Bone was wrong to involve Mr Rees-Mogg’s family.

But the newspapers – and commentators like Ms Dorries – were also wrong to falsely associate Mr Bone with Jeremy Corbyn, a man he doesn’t even like.

The media and the pundits came a cropper on this one. But I doubt they’ll think too hard about it before trying again.

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Dorries and Jones are wrong – a breakaway party of Labour ‘moderates’ won’t change anything

Nadine Dorries: Wrong.

This is fun – Nadine Dorries and Owen Jones being completely mistaken on Jeremy Vine’s new TV show:

They are wrong because the so-called Labour ‘moderates’ (in reality far right-wing MPs who joined the Labour Party out of opportunism during the Blair-Brown years) have besmirched their names far too much to do any damage to the party as a whole if they split away.

The ‘no confidence’ votes against Joan Ryan and Gavin Shuker are evidence of this. Those MPs will not be allowed to stand for Labour in the future and if they stand as independents – or even as part of a breakaway attempt at forming a party, like the SDP in the 1980s – they will sink without a trace.

The voting public can’t stand them.

But they are running out of choices. Labour members will not accept vipers in their midst and will remove them as soon as possible.

They could pin their hopes on the Conservatives calling another ‘snap’ general election that takes away the opportunity for Labour members to choose their own candidates – but it is unlikely the membership will put up with that fudge a second time in less than two years.

So they find themselves with their backs to the metaphorical wall.

It won’t be any surprise to me if they sink without a trace.

But it will be fun to see Ms Dorries (and to a certain extent, Mr Jones) react when that happens.

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Brextremist Dorries gets perhaps the hardest put-down yet

Nadine Dorries and Anna Soubry have been at loggerheads since the amendment vote on the EU (Withdrawal) Bill.

Bearing in mind that Nadine Dorries might as well have set the dogs on Tories who backed the amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill demanding a vote on the final deal, the following seems the least she deserves.

First, she tweeted:

And this is what she received in return:

And that opened a different can of worms…:

Some people should think before making comments in public.

None more so than Mad Nad.

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Nadine Dorries reveals shocking breaches of data security as Damian Green porn saga thickens

There’s a reason we call her ‘Mad Nad’, folks.

Yes, Mid Bedfordshire Tory MP Nadine Dorries has leapt to the defence of Damian Green, by triggering a data protection controversy that could engulf any number of MPs and their office staff as well.

The allegation – as we all know by now, right? – is that First Secretary of State Damian Green, the man in the second-highest political job in the land, who stands accused of inappropriate behaviour towards a lady called Kate Maltby, was found to have been misusing Parliamentary computers by using them to watch porn, as long ago as 2008.

Former police officers have been lining up to publicise evidence that a computer in Mr Green’s office was used to access thousands of pornographic images, saying he must have been the culprit as he was logged in when the images were viewed.

But Ms Dorries leapt into the fray on Saturday evening, pointing out:

Oh, really?

We’ll come back to this, but first, we need to remember that Mr Green has denied viewing porn on the computer in question – to Parliament. If he did, then he knowingly lied to Parliament – an offence that, if proved, should mean his political career is over.

Could it have been someone else in his office team, then? Well…

That’ll be a ‘no’, then. But let’s remember that, in most offices, being the person logged into a computer when it accessed pornography would be an offence for which the punishment would be the sack.

Okay – back to Ms Dorries and her allegation that other people log in to Westminster computers, using MPs’ details “everyday”.

If she’s right, then she has confessed to a major breach of the Data Protection Act – and went on to implicate “all staff”, opening a can of worms that should be disgorging its contents for a considerable amount of time:

Some of us wanted the Information Commissioner to investigate this allegation of serious and widespread data protection abuses:

https://twitter.com/Wirral_In_It/status/937306421577895936

Others pointed out that most organisations consider it an open-and-shut case that, if a computer is found to have accessed pornography while a particular user was logged in, then that user must be responsible for viewing it and must accept the consequences.

Ms Dorries took issue with this (she is ‘Mad Nad’, after all) – and let herself in for a serial slapdown that bordered on dogpiling.

Apparently Tory MPs like Ms Dorries and Mr Green believe they operate above the law. Interesting, that…

Here comes another useful snippet: Nobody in any MP’s office needs their boss’s full login details to handle emails, as Ms Dorries had claimed. See John O’Shea’s tweet below:

Ah,  but perhaps Parliament doesn’t consider porn viewing during working hours to be as serious a matter as elsewhere? The following suggests not:

Now, some commenters have pointed out that the DWP is just one government department, and the guidelines don’t date back to 2008. Fair enough. But it seems unreasonable to suggest the DWP’s guidelines wouldn’t at least be based on guidelines for all government departments – and it also seems unreasonable to expect those guidelines to have been introduced after computers and the internet were first installed in Parliament/government offices.

What do these revelations mean in the short term? Here are Luke Parks (telling us what the officials will be demanding) and Mark Keogan (explaining that it won’t make a scrap of difference, if Ms Dorries’ claims are accurate):

Meanwhile, other commenters have taken issue with media coverage suggesting that the former police officers brought forward evidence against Mr Green vindictively. Coverage, notably by the BBC, has included interviews with people who suggested that police are disgruntled with the Conservative Party for changes to their pay and conditions that have made it much harder to do their job.

Members of the public disagree vocally:

While the pornography found on the computer wasn’t illegal, and it isn’t illegal to view pornography on an office computer (simply sackable according to the rules of individual organisations, for what should be obvious reasons), Ms Rowe (above) makes the very good point that it’s possible the evidence would have disappeared if the ex-officers in question had gone through official channels. And if he did watch the porn, let’s remember that Mr Green would be guilty of lying to Parliament, and of an offence that would result in the sacking of any office worker. Why should he be exempt from the same treatment?

https://twitter.com/Panopticon6/status/937026997955506176

Yes he is – whether guilty of any of the transgressions alleged about him or not.

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Vox Spot: Will the new deputy speaker be “silenced” – or just have ‘foot in mouth’ disease

Dorries or Bone: Who is the most vile? That is the question facing MPs at the moment.

Dorries or Bone: Who is the most vile? That is the question facing MPs at the moment.

The position of deputy speaker in the House of Commons is vacant – and Tory backbenchers are falling over each other in the battle to make the silliest bid.

The vacancy has occurred after Nigel Evans quit the post to fight allegations of sexual criminality.

We have already heard that Nadine Dorries has made the priceless offer to put herself beyond Parliamentary debate by standing for election – now it seems that Peter Bone, he of the long-winded Parliamentary questions and the long-suffering wife, has also put his name in the hat.

For when he interrupted Paul Flynn during the debate on the Transparency of Lobbying Bill yesterday, saying “I am slightly worried that if he carries on for much longer we will not be able to grill the Leader of the House”, Mr Flynn responded that he would not want to deny the honourable gentleman — a possible future Deputy Speaker of the House — that privilege.

“I believe that he is one of the candidates,” said Mr Flynn. “It is fascinating to get these invitations. One from an honourable lady said, ‘Vote for me and you won’t have to put up with me on the benches. I will be silenced.’ Therefore, we are voting for the one we most want to silence and we think is most loathsome.

“It is a hard task, because we have a rich choice.”

‘Slimy’ minister talks up unfunded housing scheme while 50,000 face eviction

'Slimy' Tory mouthpiece? Kris Hopkins (left), the Coalition's new housing minister, takes tea with David Cameron on a Northampton housing estate while talking a lot of nonsense about Help to Buy.

‘Slimy’ Tory mouthpiece? Kris Hopkins (left), the Coalition’s new housing minister, takes tea with David Cameron on a Northampton housing estate while talking a lot of nonsense about Help to Buy. [Picture: WPA Pool/Getty Images Europe]

One of Parliament’s “slimiest, nastiest MPs” has got stuck into his new job, putting out a press release on how the hideously ill-judged ‘Help to Buy’ housing scheme is “surging ahead”.

Kris Hopkins, the Conservative MP for Keighley whose only previous claims to fame were allegations that “gangs of Muslim men were going around raping white kids” (thanks to Johnny Void for that one) and a Twitter spat with the odious Philip Davies, said the equity loan scheme had driven up the rate of house building and captured the public imagination with more than 15,000 reservations for new-build homes in its first six months.

Reality check: House building is at its lowest level since the 1920s. In the 2012-13 financial year, only 135,117 new homes were completed – the lowest number on record.

Earlier this year, Hopkins called for Conservatives to unite behind David Cameron – to which Nadine Dorries responded, “pass the sick bag”. Yesterday, he at least was united behind Cameron – as they toured a Northampton housing development.

According to the press release, he said government action to restore confidence to the housing market was working, with over a third of a million new homes built over the last 3 years, including 150,000 affordable homes.

Reality check: That is a lower number than any period on record prior to the current Coalition government. It is not an achievement. It is a disaster.

Under the equity loan scheme, buyers can get mortgages on new build homes with a five per cent deposit, with the rest provided by an equity loan from the government of up to 20 per cent on properties with a value of £600,000 or less.

Yesterday (October 8), Cameron and his Chancellor, George Osborne, launched the second part of Help to Buy – the mortgage guarantee – which will also be available on existing properties worth £600,000 or less. Lenders will be able to offer a 95 per cent loan-to-value mortgage, made possible by a government guarantee to the lender of up to 15 per cent of the value of the property.

Reality check: In English, this means the taxpayer is underwriting people’s mortgages. Osborne reckons he has put aside £12 billion for this part of the scheme but – as former Chancellor Alistair Darling recently noted  – the source is unidentified. “Strange that when Labour makes promises, the Tories claim it will mean more borrowing, yet it’s fine for them to make unfunded promises,” Mr Darling wrote.

Back to the press release: “Housebuilding is growing at its fastest rate for 10 years,” it says.

Reality check: The Channel 4 article, quoted above, warns us to “take the proclamations we are getting from the government about high rates of growth in housebuilding with a hefty pinch of salt. Housebuilding completions are starting from modern record lows; the rates of growth are bound to be high.”

What does Kris Hopkins have to say about this? Not a lot, in fact. He blathers that the equity loan has “captured the imagination of the public and is boosting the supply of new homes across the country”.

Reality check: Back to Channel 4 – “The levels… show that something went wrong in 12/13. Turning the corner means going from abysmal to terrible.”

“Our policies on housing are working,” said Hopkins in the press release. “Housebuilding is growing at its fastest rate for 10 years, and the tough decisions we’ve taken to tackle the deficit have kept interest rates low and are now delivering real help to hardworking people.”

Reality check: We’ve already covered the speed at which house building is growing; he should not be pretending this is a huge success when the number of new houses being built has fallen to a record low. As for the policy on the deficit keeping interest rates low – Vox Political blew that out of the water months ago. For clarity: A government can always service its debt, if that debt is in its own currency. Our debt is in UK pounds and we can always service it. Our creditors know that, so they remain happy to continue financing it. Otherwise, with Osborne borrowing 75 per cent more than he said he would in 2010, and with the UK’s ‘AAA’ credit rating gone in a puff of agency doubt earlier this year, Osborne would have been up a certain creek without an economic lever (to mix a metaphor or two).

“I’m delighted we’ve launched the second part of Help to Buy, the mortgage guarantee, which will strengthen the package of measures that have already done so much to restore confidence in the housing market,” Hopkins concluded.

Final reality check: Michael Meacher is one of many who believe that ‘Help to Buy’ will do nothing more than create another housing price ‘bubble’, most likely leading to another debt crisis. “Even [George Osborne’s] Tory supporters believe [this] will throw oil on the fire of the already overheated surge in house prices,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Britain’s housing market, 50,000 people are facing eviction because of the Bedroom Tax.

MPs’ shocking behaviour is par for the course in Cameron’s government

Feeling a bit peaky, David? But the revelations about your Tory friends and Liberal Democrat partners should hardly come as a surprise!

Feeling a bit peaky, David? But the revelations about your Tory friends and Liberal Democrat partners should hardly come as a surprise!

It must have been very difficult for David Cameron, returning from his spectacularly ill-timed holiday in the sun to find that his colleagues had been having a much better time than he has – at home.

It seems that he returned to “crisis talks” at Downing Street, where aides told him of a “sensational love affair” which has potentially significant political implications for him. Apologies for the hyperbolic language involved, but this information comes from the Daily Mail.

The newspaper said it could not disclose the identities of the people involved in these shenanigans, or any details of the relationship, for legal reasons, so the speculation machine has probably gone into overdrive and by the time this reaches your screen, The Sun has probably already disclosed the names of the co-respondents.

For those of us who aren’t that clued-up, it’s great fun to speculate. The paper said they are middle-aged figures, the affair has now concluded, and it does not involve anyone serving in the Cabinet.

Who could it be? Longtime readers of this blog will know that Vox Political has long harboured hopes of a Michael Gove legover crisis – or indeed a Michael leGOVEr crisis (see what we did there?) – but in all honesty this seems unlikely until medical evidence can prove that he is compatible with a human female.

So who, then? Nadine Dorries and Nigel Farage? Peter Bone and a human being? Doubtful. Boris and… Boris and-

Hmm.

It’s probably best not to pursue that line of inquiry. Far more interesting to sit back and wait for the ‘poshed-up’ version of the Jeremy Kyle show, in which all will be revealed.

With the curtains closed, of course – not as the badge of a serial skiver, but simply to avoid the shame of having to admit watching an episode of Kyle.

The worse news is, this wasn’t the only story breaking about government misdeeds. It seems that Cameron’s Liberal Democrat Coalition partners have been playing “pork barrel” politics (yes, it’s the Daily Mail again) by diverting taxpayers’ money into key Liberal Democrat-held constituencies.

We now know that a £2 billion scheme to refurbish roads, pavements and bridges in Nick Clegg’s Sheffield Hallam constituency has been reversed, in a deal with private business that took the project off the government balance sheet. A private finance initiative? We all know that PFI projects don’t turn out well for anyone involved other than the companies, so Clegg may have given himself a shot in the foot, rather than a shot in the arm.

The Mail also reports dodgy dealings by Danny Alexander. Apparently Beaker insisted on extra funds for mountain rescue teams, a VAT cut for ski lifts and the retention of the state subsidy for the Cairngorm Mountain Railway – all in his Highlands constituency.

And Lib Dem Chief Whip Alistair Carmichael (who?) apparently forced the abandonment of plans to cut the coastguard service, affecting his Orkney and Shetland constituency, claiming it was “a Coalition matter”.

So it must have been very difficult indeed for the comedy Prime Minister to return from holiday and learn of such appalling behaviour.

Difficult, but not a surprise.

Let’s face it – it’s little different from the way they behave when he’s at work.