Culture secretary Nadine Dorries is currently in the news for trying to privatise Channel 4, but do you know about her ultra conservative views on abortion and marriage? Learn more in the latest episode of Meet The Tories.
Video transcript
There’s a lot to say about Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries…
Like the fact she went on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! – despite not informing her party or parliament that she’d be going on the show…Or the time she had to pay back over £3000 for wrongfully claiming expenses for family trips between London and her Bedfordshire constituency.
But the truth is, even though her outrageous slip ups might prove entertaining at times…
Nadine Dorris also has a darker side – and an agenda that has uncomfortably close ties to right-wing nationalist thought.
As always, let’s start from the beginning.
As a senior Tory, you might have expected grand beginnings, but Nadine Dorries was born on the 21 May 1957 to a working class family in Liverpool – growing up on a council estate. For a few years she worked as a nurse before setting up her own childcare business – which she later sold to private healthcare provider BUPA.
It wasn’t until 2005 that her parliamentary career would get going after being elected to represent the safe Tory seat of Mid Bedfordshire. Her time as an
MP quickly revealed Dorries to be a right-wing reactionary with deeply conservative beliefs. A 2008 Channel 4 dispatches documentary revealed how UK-based evangelical groups have close ties to Dorries. One such organisation is the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship, which has lobbied the government for tighter controls on abortion and campaigned against marriage equality. The documentary shows Nadine meeting with representatives of the organisation to push aspects of their shared agenda.
It should be noted that Dorries has consistently voted in parliament with a right-wing, Christian bias.
In 2015, she voted against marriage equality. In 2014, she introduced bills to shorten the time limits for abortion from 24 weeks to 20 weeks and in 2012 pushed for abstinence-only sex education classes for girls.
An enthusiastic supporter of Brexit, Nadine was recently promoted to culture secretary by Boris Johnson – intensifying the Tories’ long-running culture war with Channel 4. Despite being funded by its own ad revenues and having the highest approval ratings of a TV station, the Tories felt its news coverage to be too critical, and are now using their majority to privatise it.
Another example of a senior Tory working against the wishes of the public.
With her fraudulent expenses claims, parliamentary votes against equal rights and disgraceful twitter outbursts against her political opponents, Dorries cemented herself as a self-serving conservative. She has railed against the poor and marginalised in tweets, yet is unable to follow parliamentary rules.
Despite her humble beginnings, Nadine Dorris has proven time and time again that she is no friend to the working class.
