So long, Nadine Dorries – but quitting after you didn’t get a peerage is more petulance than politics

She will not be moving to the House of Lords. It will, if nothing else, free up more time to focus on her television show, writes Tom Peck

Nadine Dorries said she is quitting as an MP with immediate effect (PA)

So long then, Nadine Dorries. The most profoundly stupid person in all of British public life has announced, on her own television show, that she can no longer carry on as an MP, out of loyalty to Boris Johnson.

The Tories’ misfortunes, she has stated in content which is not understood to be satirical, are because the public have not forgiven them for getting rid of Boris Johnson, and it is, she says, this behaviour “that I have to remove myself from”. Her decision to resign as an MP after being denied a peerage smacks less of politics than petulance.

It will, if nothing else, free up more time to focus on the television show, perhaps even to undergo some kind of training into how to read an autocue, or conduct an interview, two things which ordinarily do not happen on the job, as Talk TV has been attempting with genuinely mesmerising consequences.

But she will not be moving to the House of Lords. That plan, much touted, has had the kibosh put on it. We had been led to understand that neither she nor Alok Sharma would be heading for the Lords, as Rishi Sunak couldn’t face the prospect of the two by-elections that it would necessitate. But there’s certainly going to be at least one, now.

The Johnson resignation honours list is now all but out. Stanley Johnson, ie. his own father, who had been expected to be knighted, has not made the cut either. “It would look absolutely terrible,” said at least one Tory MP. Which it certainly would, but then there is an honour for Martin Reynolds, best known or indeed only known for being the chief organising force behind the Downing Street cheese and wine party.

It’s genuinely hard to tell what looks more terrible. A knighthood for dad, or an honour for the very senior member of staff who thought it wise to hold a very obviously illegal party in the back garden of 10 Downing Street in the middle of a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic, and who also had to warn people to be discreet bringing in their booze, because there would be TV cameras leaving which had been specifically brought in to film the Downing Street press telling people to avoid all unnecessary social contact.

There are, indeed, an abundance of vignettes for the ridiculous resignation honours list, not least as there are an abundance of the lists themselves, an ancient British tradition that goes all the way back to David Cameron (neither Gordon Brown nor Tony Blair bothered with them, having worked out that the whole thing was an utterly indefensible outrage that would only make them look ridiculous).

And it’s especially confusing at the moment, because rows up about prime ministerial resignation honours list now last longer than prime ministers. It’s not normal even to submit one at all. It’s especially abnormal for there to be two doing the rounds. The row over Johnson’s resignation honours list is now holding up the row over Liz Truss’s resignation honours list, which may even have been submitted first.

Cameron’s resignation honours list was lavishly ridiculous because it served as a de facto apology to all the people whose careers he had ruined through not realising how terrible he was at his job. Theresa May was absolutely vicious about it, then she turned out to be even worse than he was, and so had to do exactly the same.

Johnson was kicked out of office mainly for claiming to have not known about illegal parties in his own house that it would turn out he attended, and a direct consequence is that the guy who organised the most damaging one of all will now be rewarded for his efforts.

Truss still intends to hand out four peerages, including for the former Vote Leave chief Matthew Elliott (whose organisation Truss campaigned against) and Mark Littlewood, head of the Institute for Economic Affairs, whose economic ideas Truss borrowed when she detonated the UK economy and had to be removed from office.

“Only in Britain” is a phrase you hear quite a lot, but it really and truly only is in Britain where you can be forcibly sacked for being the worst person ever to do your job in all of history, and part of the payout is you get to give jobs for life to the people who helped you.

Not that the farce stops there, of course. So deranged are their intentions that they have finally given Labour the political capital it thinks it needs to just come out and promise to abolish the House of Lords altogether. It’s long overdue, but it’s never quite been a popular enough idea for an aspiring politician to risk promising to do it. But Truss and Johnson’s plans for the Lords are so absurd that they have made Starmer’s job easy.

Not that long ago, September 2019 in fact, Boris Johnson’s own brother resigned from his government, mainly because he absolutely wasn’t on board with shutting down parliament in order to force through Brexit. Johnson responded by giving him a peerage. It seemed almost magnanimous, albeit seemingly corrupt too. Looks like Boris will have the last laugh.