Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Should Nadine stay in the jungle?
Tempting as it is to suggest that Australia keep Nadine Dorries, her absence from British politics, even for a short period, will actually leave quite a big hole.
Today's Independent carries a list of the Parliamentary business the MP for Mid Bedfordshire will be missing whilst she is in the jungle eating bugs. This includes the major show down over the EU budget, on 22 November, which was the cause of David Cameron’s Commons defeat last week. And if she is not one of the first to be voted off the programme then it will also include the Autumn Statement on 5 December, in which the Chancellor George Osborne will update the government spending plans, and the big occasion when David Cameron and Nick Clegg will launch the coalition’s revised mission statement.
Rather naively Ms Dorries seems to believe that she can use the jungle to sound off about abortion, little realising that any such views will be edited out. I seem to recall that George Galloway thought he could use Big Brother as a political platform too but instead he ended up dressed as a cat and petted by Rula Lenska.
The Independent has spent some time talking to Nadine Dorries' constituents and unsurprisingly they would prefer her to be doing her job rather than chasing imaginary boomerangs. One suggests that she is more a celebrity than an MP, a career politician who is not interested in constituency work. After this she may not have much of a career left.
My point though is that Nadine Dorries represents a particular type of Tory politician whose views, no matter how much I disagree with them, should still be heard. Her absence from the House of Commons will make that place poorer and less varied. We need people like Nadine to remind us why Liberalism is so important.
Today's Independent carries a list of the Parliamentary business the MP for Mid Bedfordshire will be missing whilst she is in the jungle eating bugs. This includes the major show down over the EU budget, on 22 November, which was the cause of David Cameron’s Commons defeat last week. And if she is not one of the first to be voted off the programme then it will also include the Autumn Statement on 5 December, in which the Chancellor George Osborne will update the government spending plans, and the big occasion when David Cameron and Nick Clegg will launch the coalition’s revised mission statement.
Rather naively Ms Dorries seems to believe that she can use the jungle to sound off about abortion, little realising that any such views will be edited out. I seem to recall that George Galloway thought he could use Big Brother as a political platform too but instead he ended up dressed as a cat and petted by Rula Lenska.
The Independent has spent some time talking to Nadine Dorries' constituents and unsurprisingly they would prefer her to be doing her job rather than chasing imaginary boomerangs. One suggests that she is more a celebrity than an MP, a career politician who is not interested in constituency work. After this she may not have much of a career left.
My point though is that Nadine Dorries represents a particular type of Tory politician whose views, no matter how much I disagree with them, should still be heard. Her absence from the House of Commons will make that place poorer and less varied. We need people like Nadine to remind us why Liberalism is so important.
