Through The Narnia Looking Glass

One conclusion that I’ve reached from observing the occasionally eccentric behaviour of Tory MP for Mid-Bedfordshire (yes, it’s her again) Nadine Dorries is that things are never quite what she says they are. This has been pointed up by a post on her not-really-a-blog grandly titled “Schadenfreude” in which she dumps on Labour MP Paul Flynn.

Flynn has committed the heinous crime of not agreeing with La Dorries, which as any fule kno is most unwise, because, like James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole, she is invariably right about everything, even when accepting an invitation from the Government of Equatorial Guinea (EG), a country with one of the world’s worst human rights records.

While Dorries has pointed up the report that was produced as a result of the trip, it has enjoyed little publicity and the idea that the rulers of EG will take any notice of it is laughable. What has made the press is the idea that “Conservative MPs take five-star junket”, together with Dorries’ colleague Steve Baker telling that “Quite honestly, I wish I hadn’t gone. The country is governed extremely badly”.

So one might think Dorries would have kept quiet about the trip, but quiet is not her style, and so yesterday, as already noted, she was back having a go at Flynn, telling that he “will be ... summarily retired at the next election”. That’s telling him, eh? Except that is taking what was said out of context, after Flynn had been criticised for his comments about the UK’s new ambassador to Israel.

Accusations of anti-Semitism followed, although Tory MP Robert Halfon, who is Jewish, did not join in but called Flynn’s approach “outrageous”. Where Dorries gets her money quote is from Labour MP John Mann as quoted in the Jewish Chronicle. His opinion was that “when candidates are selected for parliamentary constituencies under new boundaries that Paul Flynn will be summarily retired”.

Mann is a back bencher and therefore has no influence on such matters other than his statement. It is entirely possible that Paul Flynn will not continue beyond the next General Election, but that will be down to Labour members in Newport, who are most unlikely to be swayed by Mann, and certainly not by Nadine Dorries, whose constituency will itself soon cease to exist.

So this turns out to be a personal spat which La Dorries cannot let go, to the extent of manufacturing smears against an opponent. No change there, then.