Nadine Dorries has used her latest book to continue her feud with Kemi Badenoch, with the former culture secretary claiming the newly appointed leader is both a bully and unfit to be prime minister.
Written as this summer’s Conservative leadership race was unfolding, Ms Dorries quoted a number of unnamed party insiders who attacked Ms Badenoch’s credentials.
However, a source close to the now Tory leader dismissed Downfall, which will be published on Thursday, as fiction.
Ms Dorries resigned as an MP in August 2023 after launching a blistering attack on then prime minister Rishi Sunak.
She has repeatedly locked horns with Ms Badenoch, accusing her of plotting against Boris Johnson and saying she should be “automatically disqualified” from the leadership race as a result.
Ms Dorries, who is a close ally of the former PM, recounts an instance where the now Tory leader urged colleagues to quit the former prime minister’s cabinet just hours before he was forced to resign.
In WhatsApp messages that were later leaked, Ms Badenoch threatened to remove colleagues from the group if they didn’t quit their posts.
Writing about the incident, Ms Dorries – who has repeatedly defended Mr Johnson’s record in government – said: “The stupidity of her actions that night I think has left a lingering doubt regarding her suitability to ever be a leader among MPs.”
“No one likes a bully”, she added.
Ms Dorries also blamed Ms Badenoch for the decline of the Tory party. Writing as the Conservative leadership race got underway, Ms Dorries said: “As predicted Kemi Badenoch is in the race.
“She and Rishi were meant to have been the saviours of the Conservative Party. They were supposed to have led us up to the sunlit uplands; instead we had steadily declined and were at rock bottom, the party on the verge of being wiped out of existence.
“I wonder how long the cabal who run the party can keep getting it wrong. It feels like a question of whether the party will be rid of them or they will rid us all of the party.”
Ms Dorries’ has used both of the books she has written since leaving office, the first of which is about the “political assassination of Boris Johnson”, to peddle elaborate theories about the Conservative Party, including the claim that a shadowy cabal has been pulling strings for years.
Key members of the alleged group include former cabinet minister Michael Gove, former adviser to Mr Johnson Dominic Cummings and Dougie Smith, who she claims has operated at the heart of government for years.
She claims Mrs Badenoch was the candidate selected by Mr Gove and his allies to take over from Mr Sunak as leader of the party. It is a claim that Ms Badenoch dismissed as “very strange” in an interview with The Independent last month ahead of the leadership vote.
But the former culture secretary quotes a number of party insiders dismissing Ms Badenoch’s bid to lead the party, with one former cabinet minister saying: “I could live with any one of them, other than Kemi who simply doesn’t have the temperament to be a party leader, let alone a potential prime minister.”
Another source, who Ms Dorries nicknames ‘Moneypenney’, adds: “I am certainly not alone in thinking Kemi is narcissistically self-important, and that’s why she struggles to keep her temper in check with those who don’t agree with her.
“Kemi’s temper, her aloofness and rudeness, but mostly her well-known aversion to hard work, will eventually blow her up.”
A third source, also unnamed, claims Mrs Badenoch is the Conservative Party’s “equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn”, saying they would cancel their party membership if she were to win the leadership race.
“Those of us who have worked with her know how unstable she is, how bad-tempered. She’s been bloody rude to newspaper editors”, they continued. “I’ve been told she spends her days reading every word that has been written about her”.
Ms Dorries herself adds: “If Kemi becomes leader, then the next five years will be a long, slow death.
“From newspaper editors to party donors, the stories of the breathtakingly rude and arrogant way she spoke to people were becoming Westminster folklore. Humility was not at the top of Kemi’s list of interpersonal skills”, she wrote.
A source close to the Tory leader told The Independent: “Nadine is a fantastic writer of fiction... and never misses a bandwagon on which to flog her book.”
