Pass the sickbag

While others take the Tory hypocritosphere to task for all the usual reasons, a quick visit to Nadine Dorries’s website, CiP (Comment is Prohibited) show her to be reaching for the literary emetics with all her usual lack of restraint.

For me personaly (sic), the most difficult part of being divorced is becoming single.

I manage by submerging myself in work from morning until night, but always in politics, the social side rears its head and I have to brace myself to attend yet another drinks party, alone…

…I never spend too long talking to couples, it’s never that comfortable – but as I walk away I always want to turn around and say, “you should fall asleep holding his hand every single night. You should hold his hand often, every single day, because you’re very very lucky”.

Awwwww…

…Fuck Off.

To read Nad telling like it ain’t you’d think she spends her evenings drowning her sorrows in a seedy little karaoke bar before stepping up to the mike and regaling the unlucky punters with a plaintive rendition of ‘Stand By Your Man’ but the reality is that she’s rewriting history yet again.

For 23 years they appeared to have the perfect marriage.

While her husband stood behind her raising their family, Nadine Dorries enjoyed what was seen as a rags to riches rise from a Liverpool council house to a million-pound medieval home.

First she achieved success as a businesswoman, then in politics, becoming a Tory MP and, as a key adviser to her party leader, a ‘Cameron babe’.

But when the 49-year-old MP was presented with the stark choice between her marriage and the promise of a glittering political future, she shocked her husband by choosing her job.

The glamorous blonde has announced that she has split from her husband, who has multiple sclerosis, after he gave her an ultimatum – it’s me or your political career.

To hear the Mail tell the story, its not so much that Nadine threw herself into her work to cope with her divorce so much as throwing herself into her work is what precipitated the split with her husband. Always the contrarian, Nadine appears to have bucked the usual trend of politicians leaving parliament to spend more time with their family and decided, instead, that she’d leave her husband to spend more time with her political career.

Ordinarily such things would be of little consequence. MPs are as much entitled to a personal and private life, and are no less prey to the vicissitudes of day-to-day living, as anyone else. However, as is the accepted convention, such largesse is contingent on passing the ‘hypocrisy’ test – if, as a politician, you prefer to keep your personal life out of the public arena then don’t make pretentious [and ostentatious] remarks that are entirely at odds with the truth, such as this:

Every week I hold the hand of someone in my surgery who has lost a partner. Someone they loved. Not only through death, but through divorce or separation. Someone who finds themselves in a situation they never thought they would be in.

Many unable to cope with the daily practical problems which threaten to overwhelm them because they are consumed by grief and unable to focus on the day to day tedium of life.

All I can do is hold their hand, and in an attempt to stem the tears, find the right words of comfort and hope.

Oh Puh-lease. Pass the fucking sick-bag will you.

The ‘right words of comfort and hope’ from Nadine Dorries? You’d be better off asking Nicholas Soames for advice on a health and fitness programme.

Still, the Mail’s article – if accurate (it’s the Mail, so you do have to ask) – does appear to go some way towards explaining the vicarious sensitivity of Sam Coates (of Tory Home) towards gossip linking Nadine (romantically) to his boss, Tim Montgomerie.

How so?

Well, according to the Mail, Nadine’s split with her husband occurred over the course of Christmas 2006 and here she is, less than a year later, a merry (and utterly vacuous) divorcee.

All of which, in legal terms, is pretty unremarkable – a straightforward divorce to which both parties agree and in which no complications arise over the division of marital assets or custody of children will typically take about six months from start to finish. But…

…in English law, there is only one ‘ground’ for divorce – the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage – but there are only two ‘facts’ that can submitted to the court to justify divorce within two years of a separation.

One is that of ‘unreasonable behaviour’, which requires that the divorce petition contains a series of allegations against one (or both) petitioners of sufficient seriousness as to satisfy a judge that the petitioner cannot be expected to continue to the live with the respondent.

The other – and the one that best explains why Sam Coates was recently afflicted with a bad case of the vicarious denials – is, of course, adultery.

Although it has to be said that ‘fake’ admissions of adultery are not that uncommon as a means of expediting a divorce, so a petition raised on such a basis could easily mean something or nothing in reality, but might easily contain plenty of scope for embarrassment if, say, an enterprising journalist were to obtain a copy of the relevant records.

As if to reiterate Dorries’s well deserved reputation for vapid superficiality, an abysmal puff piece in Monday’s Telegraph entitled ‘The Tories’ Nadine Dorries: Bridget Jones, MP‘ (that’s fucked Helen Fielding’s chance of flogging another fucking sequel) including this gloriously banal comment:

Now the glamour-puss of the Conservatives, with her platinum blonde bob, designer handbag, sharp black suit and “lots of diamonds”, Dorries says image is crucial in her role as a politician.

“Of course I would consider plastic surgery in the future,” she exclaims, amazed that the question should even be posed. “I am 50 now, I work in politics and when you’re trying to convey a message, nobody wants to listen to an old hag. I will definitely be dialling the surgeon’s number if the face starts to sag.”

Former Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, is reported to be unavailable for comment.

 

 

14 thoughts on “Pass the sickbag

  1. Surely the Mail would have had a problem here: in Dacreworld, women are expected to get married, stay married, and not put their career first, though I suppose this only applies to non-Tory MPs.

  2. Ha, you really have no idea. At all.

    The Mail story was a stitch-up. The only bit they got right was her name, and that’s well known.

    What were you saying last time about not caring about these things?

    Get a life, seriously.

  3. Well, the usual response to such an allegedly gross litany of errors would be either a libel action or a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission.

    Mmm… Can’t seem to find any record of either.

  4. There are some people sending me very interesting stories about this charming self-styled “Princess of the Blogs” at the moment.

    Tireless fact checking is ongoing. Naturally.

    Still no-one has responded to my question about her claiming for a Westminster pad when her blog clearly states ad nauseum that she always goes to Bedfordshire in … Mid Bedfordshire. So is she renting the bloody thing out to Saudi Pro Lifers or something? (Joke)(On several levels)

    If the Mail story was a stitch up – and despite a little teasing at mine I do believe he is quite right on that – but spitting “Ha, you really have no idea. At all.” is perhaps protesting a little too much for his own good.

    But anyway if the Mail story is a horrendous stitch up that would make up in some small way for the horrendous, lying, fibbing, hoaxing stitch up she had them do over some teeny Emily’s list grants.

    Although Nadine has an extremely disproportionate-to-her-effectiveness majority she is in fact not unbeatable. Her reputation in the constituency is not all peace and light by any means. And it is not getting any better.

  5. There wasn’t any legal action to my knowledge but I know if I was a recently- divorced public figure and mother of three daughters I’d much rather take a one-off article like that on the chin rather than painfully and publicly drag it out!
    I understand why you picked up on it (although I wish you didn’t make things so personal) but you’re being a bit too clever.

  6. Um, at the risk of sounding contrary, no one really knows what happens within a divorce except the people themselves. I think Dorries is a pathetic excuse for an MP and her stance on abortion makes me want to puke, but this is all starting to sound very unpleasant and over-personal.

  7. “but this is all starting to sound very unpleasant and over-personal”.

    When you have such sick people like Ireland, Coates and Paul what can you expect.

    No arguments just personal abuse, and of course email harassment.

  8. Sorry, but doesn’t Dorries keep bringing up her personal life? She is quite happy to slur Ben Goldacre, and runs away from challenges to her false accusations, let alone her arguments.

    By the way, HarPeople, Coates is on Dorries’ side. Has he been sending you harassing emails or something?

  9. Wow, the personal attacks on Dorries coming from this place are vile.

    Stick to attacking her politics, will you? Calling her names like ‘airhead’ and ‘fuckwit’ achieves nothing for anybody, and just makes you look silly.

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