Nadine Dorries, the Conservative former culture secretary, has announced she is standing down as an MP with immediate effect. She made the announcement in a tweet after having reportedly been dropped from Boris Johnson’s resignation honours. The move means there will be a byelection in her Mid Bedfordshire constituency where, in 2019, the Conservatives won a 24,000 majority. It will be the first byelection where the Tories will seek to retain a seat since Rishi Sunak became prime minister in October 2022. Dorries tweeted: “I have today informed the chief whip that I am standing down as the MP for Mid Bedfordshire with immediate effect. It has been an honour to serve as the MP for such a wonderful constituency but it is now time for someone younger to take the reins.” Dorries, a staunch Johnson loyalist, had previously detailed her plan to quit as an MP at the next election. Hours before her dramatic announcement, Dorries told TalkTV that “the last thing I would want to do would be to cause a byelection” in her seat.
Speaking to the broadcaster, where she hosts a chatshow, on Friday morning, Dorries said she had not heard anything but did not expect to be entering the Lords “any time soon”. Speaking on Friday after the announcement, Dorries said “something significant” had persuaded her to quit. “The bottom line is really, I’m doing my own show on TalkTV and I write a column in the Daily Mail every Tuesday, which takes a lot more time than I ever thought it would do,” she said. “And the House of Lords thing was on the cards and it’s gone back to Holac (House of Lords appointments commission) for MPs to be vetted or whatever and I just thought, you know, I think this is the time actually for me to stand down.” The Times earlier reported that Dorries, as well as Sir Alok Sharma, the president of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, were struck from Johnson’s trimmed-down honours list to avoid damaging byelections as they would have stood down to take the peerages. The prospects of such an electoral test would be more challenging for the prime minister in Sharma’s marginal Reading West constituency, where he has a 4,000-vote majority over Labour. Labour sources pointed to a recent constituency level poll that had the party within three points of the Tories. Shabana Mahmood, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, said: “After 13 years of failed Tory government, it’s time for a change. The departure of Nadine Dorries shows Rishi Sunak is too weak to lead a Tory party that has lost interest in the people of mid Bedfordshire.” Dorries, who has been an MP since 2005, has been a vocal critic of Sunak’s government since he entered No 10 and is to release a book on the downfall of Johnson. After her promotion to culture secretary under Johnson’s leadership, Dorries led the now-ditched plan to privatise Channel 4. She was no stranger to controversy during her time in parliament, losing the Conservative whip in 2013 as a result of her appearance on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!.