Nadine Dorries is the only worthwhile political journalist in Britain

And how to end the rule of the FCS

I’ve found the sneering reviews about Nadine Dorries’s book from centre-right types putrid over the last few days. Most of the focus is on the quality of the prose style; this would be a fair criticism if British journalism was still blessed with Waugh or Amis, but we live in the age of Hamish De Moron’s seven columns a week in the Telegraph calling for nuclear war, an esteemed commander of His Majesties Light Foot who cannot distinguish between ‘raising’ and ‘razing’.

Neither me nor my gentle co-author have once checked the spelling on our pieces of writing yet they command a captive audience simply because they have a hint of originality absent in the mindless dross that oozes out of those who leech pitiful salaries from Marshall/Barclays/Murdoch.

But what I find most irksome about the sneering reviews is the flippant disregard for the content of what Nadine Dorries actually researched. This woman has spent months seriously investigating the informal power structures that operate behind the Conservative party; using interviews with former Prime Ministers and leaders of the Party to bring to life a portrait of the smoky backrooms where we are told, in all political fiction, that power is really held.

Compare this to the boilerplate ‘Tory infighting’, the ‘Carrie/Dom factions’ rigmarole the Westminsters rags subject us to and you will begin to grasp how insufficient our current crop of political journalists really are. The only story I can find in the mainstream of Dougie Smith is a 2021 profile in the Telegraph. This man ran the candidate selection list in 2019 – he is far more important than senior advisors like Nick Timothy or self made celebrities like Dominic Cummings. If the purpose of our Robust and Independent Press is to provide Scrutiny, where is it? What we see here is a combination of fecklessness and cowardice. None of the Westminster HACKS are brave enough to point out the connection between Dougie Smith’s huge political influence and him running sex parties in the 1990s to which celebrities, media figures and of course, politicians were invited.