Nadine Dorries Toes The Party Line

With the result of next month’s General Election - sorry, folks, there’s still four and a half weeks’ campaigning to go - loyalty is crucial when parties want to show the voters that they are free of splits and singing from the same hymn sheet. So it may have appeared most fortuitous that Mid Bedfordshire’s Tory MP (yes, it’s her again) Nadine Dorries appeared in the Mail On Sunday to tell readers Young Dave was OK after all.

Wait, what? Wasn’t this the same Nadine Dorries who had earlier said of Cameron and his pal, the Rt Hon Gideon George Oliver Osborne, heir to the seventeenth Baronet, “I think that not only are Cameron and Osborne two posh boys who don’t know the price of milk, but they are two arrogant posh boys who show no remorse, no contrition, and no passion to want to understand the lives of others – and that is their real crime”?

It certainly was, but this apparent volte face has in its backstory three elements that are key to understanding how parties enforce loyalty in MPs, and what started the “posh boys” meme in the first place. Cameron, unlike Ms Dorries, “gets” Coalition Government; the Lib Dems may have been a small part of that Coalition, but without their presence, there would not have been a place on the Government benches for her.

So she was always on a hiding to nothing when trying to drive a wedge between Dave and Corporal Clegg. Cameron’s PMQs put-down - “I know that the honourable Lady is extremely frustrated about the... perhaps I should start all over again... I am going to give up on this one” - was excessive. And, as many critics of Ms Dorries are all too aware, she does not take kindly to that sort of thing. Thus the “posh boys” retort.

However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, there are limits to what even the most maverick MP can get away with. As the BBC reported, “Following her comments, the MP's local Conservative Association chairman Paul Duckett said in a statement: ‘Nadine Dorries MP has expressed her personal opinions and it would have been courteous of her to advise the association prior to expounding them’”.

Additionally, it was revealed recently that Ms Dorries’ constituency home was owned by former Association chairman Andy Rayment, all of which tells you why she is not likely to be jumping ship to UKIP any time soon. On top of that was the ruckus over her going off to take part in I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, which resulted in her losing the Tory whip. The local party would not have been best pleased about that.

Put the last two of those together, and it is no surprise at all that Ms Dorries has let the press know that “I knew in my heart that David Cameron was compassionate and caring … When I watched David Cameron in the leaders TV debates … I felt proud of him … He looked like a man who does know the price of a pint of milk”. Quite so. And she’s dead modest with it: “I am not so arrogant as to claim credit”.

Of course you’re not, Ms D. Another happy ending, eh? Pass the sick bucket.