Nadine Dorries’s bizarre Today interview

In these difficult times, at least we can all count on Nadine Dorries to give us a good laugh. The former Culture Secretary was up early on the Today programme to mark publication day of her book on the supposed ‘plot’ to bring down Boris Johnson. Her thesis, she told a bemused Nick Robinson, was that five Tory leaders in quick succession have been brought down by a cabal of insiders known only as ‘The Movement.’ One of them, Dorries intoned sinisterly, was Dougie Smith, the longtime Tory operative, who, she says, ‘decides who becomes an MP, who becomes a minister, who becomes a Prime Minister and remains as Prime Minister and party leader.’

Hang on a second, remarked Robinson, this stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Rather being driven out by a sinister coup, David Cameron lost the Brexit referendum. Boris Johnson meanwhile was removed after lying to the House of Commons and being ‘driven out of office by his own cabinet colleagues and his own Members of Parliament because they’d had enough.’