Nadine Dorries’s ‘disturbing’ tweets on Sunak
condemned by Tory MPs
Culture secretary’s post portraying Sunak wielding
knife at Boris Johnson denounced in light of MPs’ murders
Jessica
Elgot
@jessicaelgot
Sun 31 Jul
2022 14.13 BST
Conservative
MPs have condemned “divisive, disingenuous and disturbing” interventions
against Rishi Sunak by the culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, including a tweet
showing Sunak wielding a knife at Boris Johnson.
Other
Conservative ministers have condemned comments by Dorries, a supporter of Liz
Truss, about Sunak’s dress sense, after she compared his Savile Row suit with
Truss’ earrings from Claire’s.
One
suggested it was deeply provocative for her to tweet the image of Sunak
stabbing Johnson, in a parody of Julius Caesar, given two MPs have recently
been murdered.
The culture
secretary, one of Johnson’s closest allies, retweeted an image depicting him as
Julius Caesar about to be stabbed by a knife-wielding Sunak, a parody of his
resignation that brought down the prime minister.
The
business minister Greg Hands said the picture was inappropriate, especially
given the killing of the Southend West Tory MP Sir David Amess at a
constituency surgery in Essex last October.
“I’m sure
Liz Truss would disown this kind of behaviour. I think this is appalling,”
Hands told Sky News. “Look, it’s not even a year since the stabbing of Sir
David Amess at his Southend constituency surgery, so I think this is very, very
bad taste, dangerous even … I do find it distasteful.”
The Wales
secretary, Robert Buckland, who is also backing Sunak, told BBC Radio Wales
that the “sort of imagery and narrative is not just incendiary, it’s wrong.” He
said: “It’s time for those who think that an argument about Prada shoes or
earrings is more important, for instance, should wind their neck in and let
people talk about the issues rather than the personality.”
Simon
Hoare, the chair of the Northern Ireland select committee, tweeted that it was
“utterly, utterly tasteless. Crass and tasteless. Below the dignity of office …
Remembering, with respect, our fallen colleagues David Amess and Jo Cox. The
injured Stephen Timms. I will just leave it there.”
The former
Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis, a backer of Truss, said he did not
think the foreign secretary would support the comments. He told Sky News: “It’s
certainly not the sort of thing I would tweet … Nadine is well known as having
strong views on things. Nadine speaks for herself, she’s very much an
individual on that. But that is not a position that Liz would take.”
Writing in
the Mail on Sunday, Dorries said she “may have gone slightly over the top” with
her tweet comparing the chancellor’s suit and Prada shoes with Truss’s budget
earrings.
“I wanted
to highlight Rishi’s misguided sartorial style in order to alert Tory members
not to be taken in by appearances in the way that happened to many of us who
served with the chancellor in cabinet,” she wrote. “The assassin’s gleaming
smile, his gentle voice and even his diminutive stature had many of us well and
truly fooled.”
She said
the former chancellor “travelled along a path of treachery, and in doing so is
unlikely to win the hearts and minds of Conservative party members because,
above all else, they value loyalty and decency.”
Those
comments also drew ire from Sunak’s backers, including the MP Kevin Hollinrake,
who tweeted that there were “a number of resignations, including a secretary of
state before the chancellor … 55 resignations the next day or so, including
ones who stood for leadership themselves … Have you forgotten how Boris made
his way to the top? Rightly or wrongly, there are always limits to loyalty.”
An ally of
Dorries said: “It’s quite obviously a satirical image of Brutus and Caesar
which has been clearly Photoshopped to provide political commentary. There were
similar cartoons involving [Michael] Gove in 2016. Some people, of course, will
want to be wilfully offended.”
Dorries has
been approached for comment.
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