Dorries: PM should go to polls to win a mandate
LIZ Truss should call a general election if she wants a ‘whole new mandate’ to change Boris Johnson’s policies, one of her key supporters said yesterday.
Nadine Dorries, who was culture secretary under Mr Johnson, was a vocal backer of Miss Truss during the leadership election over the summer.
But yesterday she criticised the new Prime Minister’s approach, including over issues she was involved with in office such as plans to sell Channel 4 and pass the Online Safety Bill.
Mrs Dorries, a Johnson loyalist, said: ‘[There is] widespread dismay at the fact that three years of work has effectively been put on hold.
‘No one asked for this. C4 sale, online safety, BBC licence fee review, all signed off by Cabinet all ready to go, all stopped. If Liz wants a whole new mandate, she must take to the country.’
It came a day after Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt told Tory activists that the party must ‘modernise our mandate’, prompting suggestions she was calling for an early election.
Miss Truss appeared to rule out a general election before late 2024 shortly after becoming Prime Minister, though there have been growing public and opposition calls to go to the polls. Along with Jacob Rees
Mogg, Mrs Dorries was one of the most high-profile backers of Miss Truss this summer.
At the time, the MP for Mid Bedfordshire said Miss Truss was a ‘stronger Brexiteer’ than either her or the Business Secretary, and suggested she was the candidate most likely to continue Mr Johnson’s manifesto pledges.
She added: ‘We’ll continue with those manifesto promises and... deliver for the government and for the Conservative Party moving forward.’
Despite being asked to stay on in Miss Truss’s Cabinet, last month Mrs Dorries announced she was returning to the backbenches, with sources close to her saying she believed it was the right time to go.
But the former culture secretary has appeared to become more critical of the Prime Minister in recent days.
At the weekend Mrs Dorries accused Miss Truss of throwing Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng ‘under a bus’ amid criticism of the abolition of the 45p tax rate.
In a thinly veiled swipe, she said: ‘One of Boris Johnson’s faults was that he could sometimes be too loyal... However, there is a balance and throwing your Chancellor under a bus on the first day of conference really isn’t it.’ She added that she hoped ‘things improve and settle down from now’.
‘Years of work put on hold’