Nadine Dorries accuses Rishi Sunak of lying over chats with Boris Johnson

08 February 2024 , 10:45

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Nadine Dorries has accused Rishi Sunak of lying about his relationship with Boris Johnson (Image: nadinedorries/Instagram)

Rishi Sunak lied when he said he occasionally chats with Boris Johnson, Nadine Dorries has claimed.

The former Culture Secretary trashed Mr Sunak's claim that he and his disgraced former boss talk "on occasion". The PM claimed in an interview that he would be willing to have Mr Johnson back in his cabinet.

But Ms Dorries - a superfan of the former Prime Minister - accused Mr Sunak of being "overtly disrespectful". She also claimed the current leadership had "systematically destroyed" Mr Johnson's majority.

The former MP, who quit in a strop last year, posted on Twitter : "This is a lie. They never speak. Rishi and the team around him are overtly disrespectful towards the former PM who won the 80 seat majority they have systematically destroyed."

Her attack came after Mr Sunak told ITV's Tonight programme: "I’m proud of the work that we did together. And we worked well together for a long time. In the end there are, you know, well-documented differences.”

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When pushed on whether he’d have Mr Johnson back in his top team, he said: "Well, I never talk about these personnel things, but look, I, you know, I speak to him on occasion."

Asked when he last spoke to him, he said: "I can't remember, probably late last year." The PM used the interview to insist Tory plots against him are “miniscule” as he admitted “voters don’t vote for divided parties”. "Actually I think that the vast majority of our party is united," he said.

Ms Dorries finally quit as an MP in August last year, 81 days after she announced her resignation from the Commons with "immediate effect". The ex-Culture Secretary said she had clung on as she wanted to investigate why she had not been given a seat in the House of Lords. Labour snatched the Mid Bedfordshire seat in a by-election in October, overturning the Tories’ 24,664 majority.

In November, Ms Dorries published a book titled “The Plot: The Political Assassination Of Boris Johnson”. In it she claimed there is a Tory fixer in No10 who chopped a former girlfriend’s pet rabbit into four pieces and nailed it to her family’s front door. She said the shadowy figure known as “Dr No” had also tried to set fire to a house while children were sleeping inside. The publication of the book had been delayed for several weeks because of legal issues.

Dave Burke