Has there ever been anything more British than the reaction to Nadine Dorries’s book? The former culture secretary has penned a volume titled The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson, which is currently being serialised in the Mail titles and will be published on Thursday. Nadine has not so much chucked a dead cat on the table as claimed that a dark lord figure at the heart of Downing Street once chopped up his ex-girlfriend’s kid brother’s rabbit and nailed it to a door. I assume it is already No 1 in Amazon’s highly competitive political bunnycide category. The Mail even seems to have tracked down the alleged boy owner of the alleged rabbit, who is now a grownup and, after confirming that “something happened”, has offered an entry to the annals of Revelatory British Political Quotes 2016-The Present Day. Here it is: “I definitely had a rabbit, and I don’t now. [My parents] don’t want to talk about the rabbit, they’ve kept the same line. That I had a rabbit, and then I didn’t have a rabbit, which is normal with pets.”
Totally normal. Another hugely normal dispatch from our hugely normal country, in fact. But there’s more. Nadine has also slammed on to the table the claim that British Conservative governments are run by a cabal of shadowy figures known as “the movement”. And everyone has … just got on with their afternoon tea as if nothing has happened. Bond villain codename for a guy who fleeces donors and trashes their houses and currently advises Rishi Sunak? I wonder if you wouldn’t mind passing the scones. MP shagging a sex worker on a billiard table while four other MPs cheered him on? Just a little more milk in it, thank you so much. Boris and Carrie Johnson’s £112,549 Downing Street refurb consisted of having the dining room wall painted red to celebrate the red wall victories? This fruitcake really is quite delicious.
