Jeremy And Nadine And Rupe And Alice

Had you heard of Alice Thompson? Nor had I, and this may well have continued, given that she writes for the Times, whose website has for a while now been out of sight behind a paywall, were it not for the recurrent intervention of (yes, it’s her again) Tory MP for Mid-Bedfordshire Nadine Dorries, who has not yet got over her encounter with the pundit over a year ago.

We know that the profile of the fragrant Nadine written by Ms Thompson was not to the MP’s liking as the now infamous Dorries blog snarks “The same Alice Thompson whose husband wrote in Vogue about how much he enjoyed going with her to buy her dresses from the Chloe and Stella McCartney fashion houses”. And the piece said that Nads lives in Harlington, which she apparently does not.

Ms Dorries complains that Alice Thompson writes “from behind a veneer of privilege”, that if she “ever needed counselling she would buy it from Harley Street”, and “Alice can say all those things knowing her cleaner is washing her kitchen floor as she writes, her gardener cutting the grass and the nanny feeding her kids”. So they didn’t exactly hit it off, then.

You might think that one good mardy sulk would be that. But, as an increasing number of people are finding out, once Ms Dorries has borne a grudge, it may not be for life, but it certainly looks that way. So the pay-off in her blog post: “Oh, and Alice, darling, there comes an age where it's just not ok to wear your hair long and in the style of a sixteen year old and you sweetie, passed it some time ago”, was still being recycled eight months later.

Yes, in May she Tweeted “And that from a woman (Alice Thompson) who runs around wearing a pony tail she really should have thought twice about twenty years ago”. Me-ow! So that was it, was it? You jest. She’s still catting away today, in the same vein. So what has led to this flaring up of the Dorries hate machine? Ah well. Alice has been rotten to her pal Jeremy Hunt.

The new Health Secretary (and God help the NHS at that news) has been interviewed by Ms Thompson. He answered a question on the legal limit for abortion thus: “Everyone looks at the evidence and comes to a view about when they think that moment is, and my own view is that 12 weeks is the right point for it”. The answer was not blurted out. He was not forced into giving it.

But Ms Dorries considers Hunt, who was bright enough to have been head boy at Charterhouse, and went up to Oxford where he took a First in PPE, to have somehow been tricked. But then, she dismisses any opinion on abortion that does not concur with hers as being from “the mob”.

And she never, but never, stops to think about the offence her comments causes.