Yahoo News Nadine Dorries: Sunak supporters are trying to 'overturn democracy' by plotting against Truss
Nadine Dorries has accused Rishi Sunak's supporters of trying to dethrone Liz Truss as infighting grips the Conservatives.
Many of the MPs who supported Mr Sunak’s leadership have gone public with their criticisms of Ms Truss in the wake of the mini-Budget last month.
But Ms Dorries accused them of deliberately trying to destabilise the PM.
The former culture secretary wrote on Twitter:
Those absurdly called grandee MPs (men) agitating to remove Liz Truss are all Sunak supporters.
They agitated to remove @borisjohnson and now they will continue plotting until they get their way.
It’s a plot not to remove a PM but to overturn democracy. #BackLiz— Nadine Dorries (@NadineDorries) October 14, 2022
Ms Dorries was staunchly loyal to Boris Johnson while in Cabinet. She backed Ms Truss’s run for No 10 but appeared to suggest last week that the PM must either stick to the 2019 manifesto or call a general election.
She also launched a series of attacks on Mr Sunak during a fraught leadership election, calling him an “assassin”, sharing a doctored image depicting him stabbing Boris Johnson in the back and claiming his Prada shoes showed he was out of touch and unfit for office.
Ms Truss’s most prominent Tory backbench detractors include Mel Stride, the chairman of the Treasury select committee who ran Mr Sunak’s campaign.
Mr Stride successfully urged Kwasi Kwarteng – Ms Truss’s Chancellor – to bring forward his Medium-Term Fiscal Plan and the accompanying forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) from Nov 23 to Oct 31. Mr Kwarteng is expected to be sacked on Friday.
Michael Gove, who initially supported Kemi Badenoch but endorsed Mr Sunak late in the campaign, made a series of interventions at the Tory party conference, suggesting Ms Truss’s economic policies displayed the “wrong values” and were not conservative.
Julian Smith, another backer of Mr Sunak, tweeted the definition of “confidence” in a thinly veiled jibe at Ms Truss on Thursday following reports MPs had been plotting against her.
But there has also been criticism from those who supported Ms Truss’s leadership run.
Alicia Kearns, the new chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, used a radio interview on Thursday night to urge her to reverse the tax-cutting measures in the mini-Budget.
