Outspoken MP Nadine Dorries has said she’ll be standing down at the next general election.
In a tearful announcement she cited the “sheer stupidity” of ousting Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a prime factor for leaving.
She thinks her party “blew it [the general election]” after pushing out Mr Johnson.
The former Culture Secretary – and die-hard Johnson supporter – said her decision followed “much soul-searching”.
And she warned that the Conservative poll rating under PM Rishi Sunak were “terminal”.
Ms Dorries is the 18th Tory MP not to stand to keep their seats.
She is the MP for Mid-Bedfordshire and has a formidable majority of 24,664.
Presenting her TalkTV show “Friday Night with Nadine”, the former nurse said:
“After much soul-searching, I have decided not to stand as an MP at the next General Election
“I love my constituents and I’ve loved serving them – it’s been such an honour for the best part of two decades of my life.
“However, given the poll rating of the Conservative Party, we are now likely to go to the wire in January 2025.
“That’s the worst, weakest, and least attractive position for any Government to find itself in.
“There is no way on God’s earth that those who plotted to depose Boris Johnson expected to be in the position we’re in today.
“The Conservatives are polling worse now than in 1997 when they were thrashed by Labour.
“The elite, the faux political intellectuals, you know who I’m talking about – those who believe they know better than anyone else, bet everything on a Rishi bounce…but it never came, and it was never going to.
“The party was five points behind on the day Boris was ousted… and that was a poll deficit that would have burnt away like a summer’s mist on a morning lawn in the heat of a general election campaign.
“Today, it’s 24 points behind.
“And that, my friends, could be described as terminal.
“It leaves the party boxed into a corner with no exit route.
“I’m afraid that the lack of cohesion, the infighting and occasionally the sheer stupidity from those who think we could remove a sitting Prime Minister, who secured a higher percentage of the vote share than Tony Blair did in 1997, just three short years ago.
“That they could do that, and the public would let us get away with it.
“I’m afraid it’s this behaviour I now just have to remove myself from.”
A tearful Ms Dorries added:
“And so despite it being a job that I’ve loved for every year I’ve done it, I’m now off.
“Oh gosh, I’ve just said it out loud – there’s no going back now.”
“Regicide is in our DNA in the Conservative Party.
“People are only fighting each other in my party.
“We will never be able to undo the harm we’ve done and the wrong that we did.
“I think we blew it the day we got rid of our election winner.
“We blew it.”
It has been reported that Mr Johnson has recommended her for a peerage in his resignation honours list.