Nadine Dorries has broken her silence to insist she is still working as an MP, after a colleague said she should be stripped of the Conservative whip.
The former culture secretary, who has been criticised by two local councils for refusing to quit parliament despite promising to do so two months ago, said she was “getting on” with her job.
Mocked-up “missing” posters have been plastered across Dorries’s Mid Bedfordshire constituency. The Conservatives and opposition parties are preparing for a byelection, but stuck in limbo waiting for Dorries to make good on her pledge in June to stand down as an MP.
Responding to claims she was leaving her constituents unrepresented and neglecting her duties while continuing to receive a taxpayer-funded salary, Dorries said she and her team of four caseworkers were “working daily with constituents”.
Shefford town council and Flitwick town council – both in her constituency – recently expressed frustration over what they called a “continuing lack of representation”, claiming residents had been “abandoned” by her.
In response, Dorries used a short statement reported by the News Agents podcast to claim that “political opponents, such as Labour-run Flitwick town council are choosing the summer and news-hungry outlets in the summer recess to be noted”.
She added: “We are just getting on with the work.”
The Guardian contacted Dorries several times over the summer about such criticism, but she had previously declined to comment.
The statement came after Caroline Nokes, a Tory MP and chair of the Commons women and equalities committee, urged Dorries to “crack on” and resign since her “heart’s not in” the job any more.
Dorries, who is a staunch Boris Johnson loyalist, pledged to quit “with immediate effect” when the former prime minister stood down as an MP and she failed to secure a peerage. But she has still not handed in her formal resignation.
Rishi Sunak has criticised Dorries, describing her as an absentee MP who is not properly representing her constituents. On Tuesday, Keir Starmer said the prime minister should “get a grip” on the situation and force her out of parliament.
Nokes told Times Radio: “She shouldn’t have the Tory whip if she’s made it plain that she no longer wishes to be a Conservative MP but can’t take that final step towards resignation. I think she needs to crack on and do that.”
She added: “There is, of course, the situation that MPs cannot be sacked unless by a recall petition and certainly Nadine has not done anything to trigger that. But her heart’s not in it and if your heart’s not in it, then you shouldn’t be taking up a seat that somebody who wishes to represent the people of that [constituency] with heart and soul could be doing.”
The former deputy prime minister Damian Green also weighed in on calls for Dorries to resign. “I just think she’s not just damaging parliament, she is damaging her own reputation as well. Having said she’s going to go, it would be in everyone’s interest if she just went,” he said.
Dorries continues to draw an MP’s salary. Explaining her decision to delay resigning, she said she was waiting for an explanation as to why her nomination for a peerage by Johnson was blocked.
Urging Sunak to do something about the issue, Starmer told LBC radio: “We have got Peter Kyle who is the MP for Brighton [Hove], he is our political lead in Mid Bedfordshire and he is doing more work than Nadine Dorries up there.”
“I don’t know what her dictionary definition of immediate effect is, but 10 weeks after the event doesn’t seem to be immediate effect,” the Labour leader added. “She has got to go. Give Mid Bedfordshire an MP who will actually stand up for them, fight for them, because at the moment she is absolutely absent.
“I would say to Rishi Sunak: get a grip of this. This is one of your MPs, do something about it, force the issue and get on with it.”
Dorries continues to host a weekly chatshow on TalkTV. She has also written a book, The Plot: the Political Assassination of Boris Johnson, slated for publication in September, shortly before the Conservative party conference.
