'I’ve read Dorries's book. It should be on fiction shelves alongside her novels'

10 November 2023 , 16:08

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'What’s overlooked is they’d be lurching off a cliff if Johnson was still in charge,' says Kevin Maguire (Image: Getty Images)

Dog ate my homework, cheque’s in the post, I’m only human and other preposterous excuses are joined now by a god-like Boris Johnson was destroyed by Tory shadowy plotters.

I mean, laugh? I nearly died. Of body-shaking uncontrolled laughter. The idea is so unintentionally hilarious it kills political satire. Poisonous Boris Johnson was quite simply the author of his own downfall, a partying posh egotisical liar whose Brexit fib trick blew up in No 10 during Covid where the whole world saw the dishonest, despicable, contemptuous oaf would be out of his depth in a paddling pool.

To pretend otherwise is to construct a dangerous conspiracy theory for weirdos wearing tin foil hats. Which is precisely what Tory fan girl Nadine Dorries has done in breathless potboiler The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson. An endorsement from self-styled “Son of the Godhead” David Icke, a nutty conspiracy theorist believing quite unreasonably - even for a diehard republican like yours truly – the royal family are shape-shifting lizards, says it all.

Buyers will be hiding the novelist and former Cabinet Minister’s bonkers buster inside copies of Big and Busty or Male Stallions to escape the embarrassment of being seen with copies in public. The shop assistant in Waterstones near London’s Liverpool Street Station took pity when I quipped I was worried, nodding sympathetically as he slipped the £3-off tome into a free bag.

“People deserve to know the truth,” screams a blurb on the back of the book. They do. We do. Unfortunately these 336 pages don’t provide it. Oh no. The simple incorrect thesis is her darling, heroic Bozza, was destroyed by the Movement, a secretive cabal that for 20 years has controlled the Conservative Party.

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Prominent members of this shadowy organisation include Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, Johnson’s former Chief of Staff Dominic Cummings and a fixer called Dougie Smith who organised sex parties before the shame of working for the Conservatives. Dorries loves her Bond references including a rabbit-killing arsonist identified as Dr No and a Miss Moneypenny.

When she’s done with Bond, Thumper and Bambi jump in. The rabbit tale – it was quartered and nailed to a former girlfriend’s door, Dorries writes - has the whiff of David Cameron sticking his bloated manhood in a dead pig’s mouth. I yearn for it to be true but fear otherwise. We used to label these stories as too good to check, getting to the bottom of them inevitably ending in disappointment.

The tissue of fabrication is why mentions of Basildon Bond would be more appropriate than James Bond. The mighty Movement, a Tory version of Paw Patrol, also toppled, in Dorries’ world, Iain Duncan Smith as Tory leader, wreaked havoc on Theresa May and undermined Liz Truss. Back in the real world IDS, May and Truss were duds who verifiably flopped in top jobs.

Along the way we learn fearless investigator Dorries in her quest for the truth was horrified one Sunday morning to spot Johnson in his Cotswolds house had left up the lids on both sides of an Aga. That a chaperone handed her a Werther’s Original as they spoke. The Zoom call with a source ended with both their dogs woofing to each other.

She drank jasmine tea at meeting in the exclusive 5 Hertford Street club in London’s Mayfair favoured by the Tory monied brigade. And Dorries was so engrossed in messaging on her phone after another encounter she missed black cabs then, finally flagging one down, felt strangely cold despite enjoying a warm breakfast.

On another occasion told the Movement circulated a dirty dossier on Truss, she nodded and wiped her glasses before placing them back on her nose. It all made sense to her as she sat back against a hard leather seat if not, I suspect, to those of us with a passing knowledge of politics never mind students of the chaotic, incompetent Johnson finally driven out of No 10 by mass resignations following the drunken groping of Deputy Chief Whip Chris Pincher, a liability he put in charge of Tory MPs.

Scheming and plotting are in the DNA of Westminster, Johnson and onetime Culture Secretary Dorries themselves no stranger to dark arts. Gove is a snake, regarded by colleagues as untrustworthy. But this one-eyed blinkered account of Johnson’s humiliating end and supposed omnipotence of a bunny butchering gang is absurd, utterly ridiculous.

The stand-out truth, in an interview with Johnson, is an admission the Tories are drifting to defeat under Rishi Sunak. What’s overlooked is they’d be lurching off a cliff if Johnson was still in charge following evidence in the Covid inquiry he did want to let bodies pile high, inject himself with the virus on TV and stick a hairdryer up his nose

In the interests of full disclosure I’ll admit I like Dorries, a working class Scouser who clawed her way to the top as she endured snobby barbs. Appearing on her Talk TV show is fun. Politically I disagree with her on everything except the Conservative Party will lose next year’s election, a view we share.

But her Johnson worship is inexplicable while peevishly quitting as an MP in Mid Bedfordshire, where Labour won the seat in a by-election, because Sunak blocked a peerage promised by her idle idol is a decision that’ll haunt Dorries. I’ve read The Plot. It should be on the fiction shelves alongside her novels.