'Your constituents, local council, the Prime Minister and now the public have all had enough'
A petition demanding that absentee Tory MP Nadine Dorries quits parliament has now reached over 80,000 signatures.
The Tory MP for Mid Bedfordshire announced her immediate resignation from Parliament in June but is yet to hand in a formal resignation. Dorries has faced criticism from the opposition as well as from within her own party, with Rishi Sunak labelling her an ‘absentee MP’ who is not properly representing her constituents.
She has said she will only formally resign when she gets more information about why she was denied a peerage.
Now a petition calling for her to quit on the 38 Degrees website has reached over 80,000 signatures.
“Your constituents, local council, the Prime Minister and now the public have all had enough. Either start representing the people of Mid Bedfordshire or stand down with immediate effect, so they can have the representation they deserve”, it said.
The petition went on to add: “Nadine Dorries hasn’t spoken in Parliament for over a year and she hasn’t maintained her constituency office for a long time. Between presenting her own TalkTV show, appearances on GB News, writing a book on Boris Johnson, and her weekly Daily Mail column, she seems to be doing anything but the job she was elected and paid to do!”
Dorries is also facing a plan to force her out of Parliament when MPs return from the summer break.
Labour MP Sir Chris Bryant, chair of the Standards Committee, has put forward proposals and wants to table a motion ‘saying the member for Mid Bedfordshire — and, for that matter, anybody else who hasn’t turned up for six months — must attend by such-and-such a date or will be suspended from the House for 10 sitting days or more’, the Financial Times reported.
If MPs approve a suspension of 10 days or more this can trigger a by-election in the constituency. Dorries has not spoken in the Commons since July 2022 and last voted in April.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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