Good riddance to Nadine Dorries – but I won’t forget her political twists and turns

‘Nadine Dorries is both permanently in-your-face and something of an enigma.’ Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

I am not entirely sure when Nadine Dorries entered my consciousness, but it was a long time before she – and this remains something that strongly resembles a fever dream – became a secretary of state. It might have been back in 2010, when she professed in a New Statesman interview to “totally admire” Sarah Palin. Perhaps it was earlier, in 2008, when she referred on her blog to an anti-abortion conspiracy theory, speculating that 21-week-old foetuses could punch their way out of the womb.

Maybe it was when she was criticised by the standards committee after admitting that her blog, aimed at updating her constituents, was in fact “70% fiction” (her words), but then later wrote on the same blog that “everything on the blog is accurate”, which presumably was part of the 70%. Was it when she compared the Telegraph’s investigation into MPs’ expenses to coming close to a McCarthyite witch-hunt? (She appears keen on accusations of witch-hunts.)