Nadine Dorries - Not Helping Bozo

Some would by now have decided that the best course of action would be to keep schtum. But not Mid-Bedfordshire’s Tory MP (yes, it’s her again) Nadine Dorries, who has denounced the claims that alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson ranted “Let the bodies pile high in their thousands” in response to demands for another lockdown, only to find that more and more people are prepared to say he really said it.

After the Daily Mail broke news of the now-infamous quote, Ms Dorries went into action. “This is an outright lie. Not one named source or substantiated fact. Days before Hartlepool by election and a wide set of local/PCC/Mayoral elections. It’s mendacious, vexatious co ordinated gossip given in order to negatively influence the outcome”.

And when former Screws and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan suggested it was a resigning matter if Bozo did say it, there she was again. “It is an outright lie. As you know Piers, a by-election and major local/mayoral elections happening in days. Not one substantiated fact or named source in that article”. That, it seems, was unwise.

Not much later, ITV News’ political editor Robert Peston said he said it. “I am told he shouted it in his study just after he agreed to the second lockdown”. Two witnesses “have corroborated the Daily Mail's account to me. Also these sources insist they did not brief the Mail, so that suggests there are three sources”. What say Ms Dorries now?

“When I called David Cameron a posh boy, everyone knew who made the comment, I owned it with my name on it and I took the knives in my back as a consequence. Man up Robert, name your cowardly (fictitious) source”. Two things here. One, her passing an opinion is a seriously false equivalence. And Two, er, over to the BBC.

“Boris Johnson said he would rather see ‘bodies pile high’ than take the country into a third lockdown, sources familiar with the conversations have told the BBC”. Now, both the Beeb and ITV had backed up the Mail’s claim. So it should have been no surprise that, this morning, the Mail has returned to the story. And so has the fragrant Nadine.

“‘Fresh sources confirm.’ Who? What are their names? Where is the evidence? This is untrue. It’s unsubstantiated gossip invented 11 days before a byelection in order to influence the outcome”. Be careful what you wish for, Ms Dorries. Remember Peston?

Well, “Two sources who claim Boris Johnson did say he would rather have ‘bodies pile high in their thousands’ than implement a third lockdown are prepared to speak publicly. If the prime minister continues to deny it, they will speak under oath, says [Robert Peston]”. Also, Bozo has done the denial thing in the past, only to then to be proved wrong.

He claimed he wasn’t having an affair with Petronella Wyatt. But he was. And Michael Howard sacked him - for lying about it. He claimed the phone hacking scandal was a Labour put-up job. That wasn’t true either. More recently, he’s made some highly creative claims about Brexit that are steadily unravelling. His word carries very little weight.

And if Nadine Dorries keeps on calling “liar” on others, only to find that they were right, her word won’t carry much weight in future either. I’ll just leave that one there.

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