Nadine Dorries: ‘I’m actually smarter than these guys in No 10’

Eleven minutes before my lunch with Nadine Dorries is due to begin, it is cancelled. The message comes by phone. “I know it’s fucking irritating,” says the ringer of bad news, a chap called Piers, who introduces himself as Dorries’s agent. The problem is that Dorries is finishing a book and would breach her publishing deal by speaking to me. “She’s not perfect . . . She forgot . . . She’s in a state of purdah.”

What? Imperfect I get, but the idea of Dorries in a state of purdah stretches plausibility. It would be like an ice cream in a state of gas or a traffic cone in a state of panic. Dorries is, almost by definition, not in purdah. Since being elected to Westminster in 2005, she has been out there, laying something out, winding someone up.

She taunted David Cameron and George Osborne as “posh boys who don’t know the price of milk”. Brought into Boris Johnson’s cabinet, she was among the last loyalists as his government combusted. Anti-Brexiters pounced on her provocations, which arrived more regularly than any British train. The minister in charge of sport, Dorries confused rugby league with rugby union. In charge of tackling disinformation, she claimed Johnson had been cheered by crowds at the Queen’s jubilee, when videos showed boos.

A week ago Dorries, 66, found out that she wouldn’t become a baroness in Johnson’s resignation honours. She said she’d resign as an MP in protest — deepening the Tory civil war. She blamed “the class ceiling” and accused prime minister Rishi Sunak (another “posh boy, who went to Winchester and Oxford”) of going back on a commitment. On which note, I tell Piers, wouldn’t it be ironic if she went back on her commitment to lunch? He gives up trying to silence the unsilenceable: “I’ll talk to Nadine.”

Dorries arrives in the small Italian restaurant 20 minutes later. “You got me in trouble,” she smiles, disarmingly. This is the reality of the outgoing MP for Mid Bedfordshire. She is more personable, more nuanced than her viral moments suggest. She’s never been just a loudmouth. She grew up poor, worked as a nurse, then founded a childcare business. She sold the company for seven figures, and became an author, selling 3mn copies of her novels. “I’m Liverpool Irish. There is something in the Irish DNA that makes people write in a way that works.” When she became a minister, officials expected madness, but Dorries brought method too, guiding policies, including a bill to regulate social media. “She’s a very compassionate person, until she gets on Twitter,” says a former colleague. 

“Being underestimated is the story of my life. It works to my advantage every time. Who’s the winner now [after the peerage row]? Because it’s not Rishi Sunak or [his political adviser] James Forsyth. Whose reputation is damaged? It’s not mine. Who looks the loser? It’s not me. OK, so I’m not going into the Lords, but I’ve got a lot of things happening in my life that are very productive. Has my reputation been tarnished? Am I seen as the lesser person? Am I going to lose three by-elections?” 

She defends Johnson, this week found guilty by a committee of lying to parliament over pandemic parties. “When I give you my loyalty to someone, that’s it — I never veer from it.” Could he come back? “I don’t think he will. Why would he come back? Most of the MPs who voted to remove him would rather poke their own eyes out than admit they were wrong.”

But, she argues, “since Boris was removed, parliament has ground to a halt. It’s a zombie parliament. It’s dead. Everybody’s at home. There are no votes.” She is still an MP, having delayed her departure, but is due to drive home to the Cotswolds midweek to water her tomatoes and cucumbers. Is this the way Britain’s populist experiment ends, not with a bang but with a rush for honours and a well-tended vegetable patch?

“Do you write nasty bits?” Dorries asks, reviewing the menu. She tells me that she agreed to this interview because I mentioned that my mum, like her, grew up in Liverpool. I’m distracted by someone walking past the window topless. “A woman or a man?” says Dorries, not fazed enough to look out.

I ask if the honours saga is the angriest she’s been in politics. Dorries chides me for the question: “You wouldn’t think a bloke was angry.” How would she describe her state of mind? She concedes she’s “quite cross”.

Sunak has denied vetoing Dorries’s elevation to the Lords. But she says his team “deliberately withheld” that she would need to promise to step down as an MP within six months. “They knew I wouldn’t be on the list, because they hadn’t given me the information to act to ensure that I was . . . I’m actually smarter than these guys in No 10. All they had to do was work with me.”

Why would they block her? “It’s to punish Boris. If you look at my CV, I am as entitled as anyone else to go to the Lords — in fact, far more entitled than some.” Indeed, also on Johnson’s peerage list was his 29-year-old former junior aide. “I’m not going to comment.” Johnson even wanted a knighthood for his dad. “Yeah, I don’t know what was behind that.”

She orders mozzarella with grilled vegetables, and I go for a pizza with capers. The restaurant blasts out air con and Spanish soft rock as compulsory side orders. The honours row appears to put the title into entitlement; it’s unseemly at a time when the Conservatives have little to show for 13 years in power. Brexit is deemed a failure by voters, the economy is sluggish, public services are straining. Have the Tories achieved enough? “It’s hard to say because of the war in Ukraine and the pandemic.” 

I was always quite supportive of Rishi. But he’s behaved in such a way that’s made me think what you see on the surface is all fake

She became a Conservative because Margaret Thatcher gave her family the right to buy their council home. Today’s families are unlikely to thank the Tories for housing policies, I suggest. Dorries, who has three daughters in their thirties, agrees. “People who are renewing their mortgages are in pain. I spoke to someone yesterday, whose mortgage is being renegotiated from 1.1 per cent to 5.4 per cent, who is distraught. And we’re not even building houses.” So we should be building houses in rural constituencies like hers? “There are lots of brownfield sites. Our problem is the developers who only want to go and buy the greenfield sites.” Ah. 

Dorries, who declined to serve under Liz Truss, has seen her own causes fizzle: Sunak dropped a plan to privatise Channel 4, and watered down the online harms bill. “It’s ironic . . . He hasn’t even had the guts to do something about [social media] and then he starts talking about [regulating] AI.”

Maybe the Conservatives need a break from power. “I think it’s defeatist. The last time we had a break it took us 13 years to get in.” If Labour reforms the voting system, “there’ll never be a Conservative government again”.

The food arrives. “I was always quite supportive of Rishi,” she claims, oddly. “But he’s behaved in such a way that’s made me think what you see on the surface is all fake.” 

As a child, Dorries was so poor she had to borrow school shoes. Her father was too ill to work. He died alone when she was 20: she found his body at home a week later. Her only brother died in a road accident soon after. Loss made her defensive. “And there are times when I’ve regretted that defensiveness.” 

She had reason to distrust institutions too. She has recounted being abused by a priest. Later, when she asked for a bank loan to start her business, the manager asked why her husband wasn’t at the meeting, so she started with nothing. She made enough money to go into politics, but parliament in the early 2000s was its own shock. She arrived “this softie, touchy-feely, huggy person”. Arrogant men spoke over her. “Those first five years shaped me for the rest of my time.”

Politics is “hard”. “I was actually physically attacked in that square,” she says, indicating across the road. She has consoled suicidal fellow MPs. “Parliament is a very cold and very lonely place for a lot of people. There are 650 MPs, it’s like 650 businesses who are competing.” 

As a former nurse, does she understand why nurses have been on strike? “Actually, no. If everyone just got what they wanted, we’d be in a pretty dire state [with inflation]. I had to go out on dates to be fed when I was training to be a nurse. I was that cheap. It was only food though! I’m not saying it should be that bad.” 

She says the NHS could pay nurses more if it paid management consultants less, but argues ministers are stuck because David Cameron’s “insane” reforms made the service independent.

I had to go out on dates to be fed when I was training to be a nurse. I was that cheap. It was only food though!

She was a health minister during the pandemic. What does she feel about the PPE contracts? “Concern. I was bombarded by messages from people: so-and-so can get you 2mn test kits. I just passed them all on. But it is quite odd how some people seem to have managed to secure deals. [The process] was opaque to me.” To make so much money in a pandemic was “ethically wrong”. She refers to a Tory baroness, Michelle Mone: “What actually happened there? How did she get the contracts? No one flagged it past me.” 

Some Tories blame the civil service for stymieing policies. Not Dorries. “Everything comes down to leadership . . . My experience of the civil service is that, if you value it and work with it, it works like nothing else.” Stories of how Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary before her, had treated officials “took her breath away slightly . . . The more junior you were, the worse it got.” Dowden is now deputy prime minister. “How did that happen? He’s a bloke who can’t even speak at the despatch box without reading notes.” I have to keep pinching myself that she is talking about people in the same party. 

Dorries despairs that the quality of MPs has seen a “drastic drop” since the 2009 expenses scandal: “A lot of people say, ‘Woah, I’m not going to put myself through that.’” She has been a one-off, albeit not always in a good way. She told MPs that some supposed tower block residents in a Channel 4 reality show she’d appeared in were actually paid actors. When a Tory-led committee found no evidence for the claim, she refused to withdraw it. 

She notes that the committee chair stepped down after misconduct allegations. “I would go to my death saying I was right.” She says the mum of one supposed actor later rang her to arrange a visit to parliament. “I can hear his mum’s voice . . . I remember the conversation very well.” In previous evidence, Dorries could only “vaguely remember [the call], not enough to recall the conversation”.

This attitude starts to niggle. She insists Sunak is “not a very clever guy”. He “came 200-and-something in his year at Oxford”, whereas Johnson came “top of his year”. This is wrong: unlike Sunak, Johnson didn’t even get a first-class degree. Dorries is defiant. “You won’t meet anybody cleverer.”

My pizza has enough salt to digest one of Johnson’s partygate explanations. Dorries has abandoned a small mountain of mozzarella on her plate — it is both half-finished and finished, a bit like Sunak’s government.

She and Johnson offered disruption. What if, seven years after the Brexit vote, the public has decided it is bored of that? She claims that Johnson was punished for pushing through Brexit — dragged down by “the legal establishment, the media establishment, ITV, Sky, BBC, your paper, The Times, everybody, the Daily Mail”. (She writes a weekly column for the Mail, as now does Johnson) “In the future, we will be closer to the EU and no one will dare upturn the apple cart, because of what happened to Boris.” 

Or maybe Johnson just broke the rules and was held to account. Here lies a contradiction. For most of her life, Dorries embodied individual responsibility; now she lets Johnson off the hook. The two remain close. Johnson, an amateur artist, has painted a picture of his perfect cabinet, with Dorries in a red dress. “Cringe moment!” Doesn’t she tell him he made mistakes? “I do. I said to him a few weeks ago, ‘It’s not all about you, you know.’ He shrivelled in the corner of a chair, with this puppy dog look.” 

Maybe she has become the establishment? “I certainly haven’t. Because I get myself into trouble too often.” I wonder why she’s so keen to join the Lords, whose powers, as recently as 2018, she wanted to reduce. “I do revere the Lords. Do you know why? They’re so polite over there. It’s like the opposite of the Commons. Polite.”

I do revere the Lords. Do you know why? They’re so polite over there. It’s like the opposite of the Commons. Polite

Acceptance matters to Dorries. Even today she feels class judgment: “It’s worse, but it’s quieter.” She says social mobility has ebbed since her youth. “If you aspired, there was more equality of opportunity than there is today.” I confess that I went to Winchester College. “Huh! Are you Rishi’s mate?” But she isn’t really at war with posh boarding schools: “I sent my girls to Ampleforth.” 

How would Dorries rank the five Tory prime ministers since 2010? “[David] Cameron’s big mistake was not going to Europe and negotiating a better deal. His second mistake was resigning when he did.” 

It is a staggering rewrite. Dorries called for Cameron to resign in May 2016, claiming he’d “lied profoundly” in the Brexit campaign. She even sent a no-confidence letter. “Were there [no-confidence letters]? I don’t think so,” she says. “He was a good prime minister. I think it was selfish of him to resign.”

Dorries blurs fact and fiction so easily, I’m not even sure she notices. Her defensiveness, acquired through fire, seems to stop her questioning herself. Perhaps one day she’ll remember having liked Sunak.

Two hours is enough to discover that Dorries is her own coalition government: combative but vulnerable, kind but infuriating, outsider but insider. “I’m just worried about all the horrible things you’re going to write,” she smiles. Whatever I write, whatever evidence I produce, I feel it won’t change her mind. Is that horrible? No, I think she’ll take it as a compliment.

Henry Mance is the FT’s chief features writer

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