Nadine Dorries: a minister for the culture wars?

The politician best known for eating ostrich anus on I’m a Celebrity in 2012 has been made Minister for Culture in Boris Johnson’s reshuffle

Nadine Dorries
Nadine Dorries: bestselling author
(Image credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

“It was so loud”, you may well have heard it at home, said Harry de Quetteville in The Daily Telegraph: the sharp intake of breath among Tories at Westminster when it was announced that Nadine Dorries had been made Minister for Culture in Boris Johnson’s reshuffle. “Culture Secretary?” The politician best known for eating ostrich anus on I’m a Celebrity in 2012 – an appearance she made without permission from her party, and for which she was suspended? And who has, more recently, penned a string of lowbrow (but bestselling) historical novels? How had the woman some MPs call “Mad Nad” done it, her rivals wanted to know. Well, her loyalty was part of the equation. A former nurse and single mother who used to live on a council estate in Liverpool, Dorries loathed the “arrogant posh boys” David Cameron and George Osborne. Yet she adores Johnson – so much so that she cried when he withdrew from the leadership race in 2016.

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