Nadine Dorries’ Drink Problem

After Tory MP Anna Soubry left Parliament to address a pro-EU rally yesterday, she made an emotional speech to the gathering, telling them “My mother is 84 and she wept on Friday, just like my 24 and 25-year-old daughters shed tears because we made a terrible mistake on Friday by voting to leave the European Union”. One of her colleagues, perhaps as they were one of those who voted to leave, took grave exception to this.

To no surprise at all, that person was (yes, it’s her again) Mid-Bedfordshire MP Nadine Dorries, whose desire to put the boot in on Ms Soubry was such that she Tweeted “I saw Anna Soubry leave the bar before she went outside. She was inebriated, not emotional”. Sadly, Ms Soubry had not been in the bar, and was not inebriated, but she was a lawyer. So it was also no surprise that the Dorries Tweet was soon withdrawn.

There is, however, a deeper problem for Nadine Dorries, in that she has significant previous when it comes to accusing others of being drunk, or having some kind of drink related problem. Worse, she has no room to call out anyone for enjoying a glass of wine or three, as this is something, by her own admission, she does herself.

The fragrant Nadine memorably accused (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch of being at “the pop bottle”, and suggested she was “into the hard stuff”. Ms Mensch has many faults, but drink is not one of them. It was not an isolated occurrence: when Tim Gatt of ITV wound her up, her first reaction was to snipe “Drinking already Tim?”

There was more. At last year’s Bafta awards, Stephen Fry got the Dorries treatment, as she Tweeted “Stephen Fry totally ruined the #BAFTAs for me with his 'Willykins' remark following Prince William's VT Was he drunk?” First reaction - make accusation of drunkenness. Then there were her attacks on Peter Oborne, then at the Telegraph - he was the prime target of “I think the drunk reporters (one more famous than others) at the Daily Telegraph does that best”. That was not an isolated incident, either.

So what evidence is there that the fragrant Nadine might enjoy a tipple herself? Here we need look no further than … her own Twitter feed, where she let the world know, firstly, that she buys plenty of the falling over water: “Know every supermarket with £10 French wine reduced to fiver [because] lots is drunk and I don't mind, they leave thinking the food was good”, before admitting one of those drinking the stuff was her.

Yes, there she was, openly Tweeting “Just agreed to do @MurnaghanSky on Sunday morning with Ken Livingstone . Really must stop drinking wine with dinner”. By Nadine Dorries’ own admission, her thought process was impaired by alcohol. That, in a nutshell, is why she is the last one who should be calling out others for their drinking problems, quite apart from defaming her colleagues into the bargain.

Nadine Dorries is an ocean-going hypocrite. No change there, then.