Is the establishment trying to get even with Nadine Dorries ?

Ever since Nadine Dorries became more than Jack Straw's favourite blogger by leading the case against late abortion she's been a marked woman.

She is an effective advocate of her cause, and a strong representative of her constituency. She also has the common touch, perhaps because she has a hinterland of experience which is just so lacking, especially amongst the career politicians on the Labour benches.

Hence perhaps her being singled out for the unpleasant attacks in the McPoison Red Reg scandal in No 10. Just the sort of bullying that has been handed out to many opponents of No 10.

More recently the media ( see BBC ) have started using a very unflattering picture of her partially blinded by sun light. She's a striking woman who photographs a lot better than that unless you have malicious intent to make her look bad.

She has upset No 10 by demanding an apology in PMQs when she over came the Speaker's resitance to put a question directly to Gordon Brown. She is also taking legal action against Gordon Brown's former right hand man Damian McBride.

Yes her card has been marked all right.

So tonight we have the news that the Daily Telegraph is going after her. This is the Daily Telegraph that tipped of No 10 about the McPoison emails, despite giving assurances to Guido that it would do no such thing.

Am I the only one to find all this just a little suspect ?

However, I have to admit her explanation on the second home allowance isn't water tight as it stands. Perhaps mistakes have been made. We will find out when David Cameron's review of his MPs expenses produces its results.

Given what must have been considerable disruption to her personal life from her split with her husband in 2006, perhaps mistakes have been made. But I find it very hard to believe that she has deliberately been deceitful. I find it far easier to believe that the establishment has seen its chance to get even. Nadine has been just the sort of MP this country needs and I for one will be very sorry if she has slipped up or this damages her.

Update: I seem to have some problem linking to specific posts in Nadine's blog, so I hope it will be OK to cut and paste her post today (16th May 09). The attitude of the Daily telegraph in all this is looking more and more suspect all the time !

Copied from Nadine's blog post 16 May 09 titled "The Other place" ( highlighting is my own)



I had hoped that I could retain some of my private life and keep it just that, private. It appears that this is now impossible.




The Telegraph has every right to ask questions and to hold politicians to account for the way they spend public money. But their reaction when I told them I would publish my response to their allegations on my blog was revealing. It appears that the general public is only entitled to hear the Telegraph’s version of the truth if they pay for a copy of the Telegraph. They also felt it necessary to phone CCHQ with veiled threats about what they could do to me in the future if I dared to post the letter they sent to me on my blog before they published their own article in today’s newspaper. I am afraid that the Telegraph doesn’t appear to get the ‘new media’. If anyone is going to publish anything about me, I will do it myself, first.





Yes I do claim for my second home in Bedfordshire using my ACA. I rent it. I never felt comfortable buying using tax payers money.




I felt it very necessary that I should commute from my constituency to London on work days with the rest of my constituents, in the cattle truck trains, in the jams and delays even though I leave early in the morning and don’t arrive home most days until gone midnight, long after my fellow morning commuters are in bed.




But, yes, I do have another home. It was where I went to after I had finished my Parliamentary and constituency work and changed into a mother and looked after my girls. I lived in my main family Cotswold home until my marriage broke down in 2007. The family home was then sold. I then rented a home in the Cotswolds where my daughter went to school and where my ex husband looked after her from Monday to Thursday during school and Parliamentary term time. He then moved out before I arrived back and spent his time with a significant other and I stayed in the home, which I paid for from my own money. Sometimes, on the very late week nights I stay in London, at my own expense.




During Parliamentary recesses, when I am not in the constituency or the Cotswolds, I take my girls abroad. The rest of the time during weekends I finished work and spent my time in the Cotswolds preparing the week’s meals for my daughter, washing and ironing school uniforms, changing sheets, checking homework, and leaving to drive back to Bedfordshire when she was in bed late on a Sunday night when I had finished packing her school and PE bag and hanging the week’s uniforms on her wardrobe door, just before my ex husband came back to take over.




I never wanted my constituents to think that I had another prime responsibility other than Bedfordshire and Parliament; maybe I should have been more open.





My daughter was due to start boarding school in September but instead she started at a school in Bedford. At the weekends we go back to the Cotswolds together, or, if I have to work such as this weekend, we stay in Bedfordshire.





During the Parliamentary term time, it is unusual for me not to have a constituency engagement.




I spend more nights away from my constituency home than I spend in it and I use it for the purpose of my work. I do, however, retain the right to have my daughter, or daughter’s with me depending on who is with me at the time. It may only be a second home, however, it is a home.




So, to my constituents and no one else, I am sorry. My crime is that I haven’t owned up to you that I don’t always live here – that I have a private life, which has not always run smoothly. I couldn’t work harder for Bedfordshire than I already do - I have given it almost every day of my life since you elected me. In politics, my constituency always comes first, but in my private life my family does. I can’t apologise for that. What sort of person would I be if I did?





By trying to protect my girls and keeping the circumstances of my marriage break up private and the arrangements for looking after my youngest daughter in the family, I realise that I am in fact arousing suspicion.




I don’t have much more to say other than the posting of this blog will humiliate my daughters, but what else can I do? I have to make sure people understand that not everyone has a life which runs to plan. It really isn’t always a wonderful life and as a mother you just have to do what you have to do.

Somebodies will no doubt go through Nadine's claims for expenses and allowances with a fine tooth comb, but it doesn't seem to me that she was enriching herself or costing the tax payer excess costs. In another time the sisterhood would have stood up for her as a working mother, but that's before she stood up for children terminated after 20 months gestation.

Further - Dizzy Thinks gives his view on why renting was a honourable thing for Nadine to do.

Monday 18th DT goes with an article saying Nadine Dorries apologises to her constituents - looks to me like they are trying to justify themselves here....