Tories urge Rishi Sunak to listen to Nadine Dorries on policy

Tories urge Rishi Sunak to listen to Nadine Dorries on true blue policies after she blasted the PM’s record in her resignation letter

• Senior figures said the Tories must get back to traditional stance of cutting taxes

Rishi Sunak was last night urged to heed Nadine Dorries’s warnings in her damning resignation letter and return to vote-winning Conservative policies.

Senior figures said the Tories must get back to their traditional stance of cutting taxes and controlling spending or risk alienating grassroots members.

The demands came as former Cabinet minister Ms Dorries stepped up her attacks on Mr Sunak by predicting he would lead the party to defeat at the next general election.

Downing Street, it is understood, will not look to reopen old wounds and stayed silent after The Mail on Sunday revealed how Ms Dorries was finally quitting as an MP with a scathing critique of the PM’s ‘adrift’ administration.

But her message caused ructions within the party, with grandee Sir John Redwood saying: ‘The best way for the Prime Minister to respond to the attack that he is not using Parliament to give us good Conservative reforms: cut taxes, control spending and legislate to stop the war on motorists.’

Rishi Sunak was urged to heed Nadine Dorries’s warnings in her damning resignation letter and return to vote-winning Conservative policies

Asked if she wanted the PM to be ‘toppled’, Nadine Dorries set out a ‘litany of failures’

Ms Dorries’s departure means there will be a crucial by-election in her Mid Bedfordshire constituency in October, potentially coinciding with the Conservative Party conference or the first anniversary of Mr Sunak entering No 10.

Held by the Tories for almost a century, it has become a safe seat under Ms Dorries, with her majority increasing from 11,355 in 2005 to 24,664 in 2019.

She revealed yesterday the pressure she faced from party colleagues not to step down in the two-and-a-half months since saying she would quit after being denied a peerage in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours.

‘My local association party were actually imploring me not to go because they felt the most damaging thing that could happen would be if a seat like mine was lost in a by-election,’ she told Talk TV. 

‘If my seat is lost in a by-election, it will be the biggest defeat in a by-election in living history.’

Asked if she wanted the PM to be ‘toppled’, Ms Dorries set out a ‘litany of failures’, including the abandoning of housebuilding targets, leaseholder reform and a new social care system. ‘There are so many things being kicked into the long grass since Rishi took power,’ she said.

Ms Dorries said that, at the 2019 election, people voted first for Mr Johnson ‘and then they voted for his manifesto, which was visionary’. 

Veterans’ minister Johnny Mercer said Ms Dorries claim that defence spending had been reduced was ‘fundamentally not the case’

While Downing Street has not responded to Ms Dorries’s resignation letter, veterans’ minister Johnny Mercer said her claim that defence spending had been reduced was ‘fundamentally not the case’.

‘Recollections may vary on some of these policies but, look, she’s entitled to her view,’ he told GB News.

Claire Bullivant, from the Conservative Democratic Organisation, which represents grassroots members, said: ‘Nadine’s decision and her heartfelt letter shed light on the concerns many share about the current direction of political leadership. 

Conservatives were elected on their 2019 manifesto. Nobody in Government has an electoral mandate to deviate from that.’

The PM’s allies pointed to his repeated insistence that, as a Conservative, he wants to reduce the burden of taxation, but that cutting inflation must be his priority for the economy. ‘Once we’ve done that, I will deliver tax cuts,’ he vowed last month.

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