Gay equality critic Nadine Dorries suspended as a Tory MP over ‘I’m a Celebrity’ row
Equal marriage critic Nadine Dorries has been suspended as a parliamentary member of the Conservative Party after she announced that she would be appearing in ITV’s reality show I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!
The MP, one of the most vocal critics of David Cameron’s policy to introduce equal marriage for gay couples, has had her whip withdrawn pending a meeting with the Chief Whip Sir George Young. While she is in Australia filming the programme, it is understood that she will continue to draw her salary, meaning tax payers will stump up £5,478 in wages for work that she will not be completing.
Earlier today, the Home Secretary Theresa May said: “Frankly, I think an MP’s job is in their constituency and in the House of Commons.”
Mrs Dorries said: “I’ve worked seven years as an MP and I’ve never taken a day off work in parliamentary time. I’ve worked all through recess and I only had four days off this summer.
“Parliament is in half-term while I’m there. I’ve not done anything to prepare for the jungle. I worked right up until I left the UK for Australia.”
Mrs Dorries is one of the most vocal Conservative opponents of equal marriage. Earlier this year, she claimed that she’d never met a gay couple who wished to be married, meaning that the policy advocated by her party leader and by Mrs May should be binned. Mrs Dorries wrote: “Gay marriage is a policy which has been pursued by the metro elite gay activists and needs to be put into the same bin. I have yet to meet a gay couple in my constituency or beyond who support it; in fact, the reaction has been quite the opposite. Great Britain and its gay couples don’t live on Canal Street in Manchester, shop in The Lanes in Brighton or socialise at Gaydar in London.
“Gay couples are no different from heterosexual couples and yet this policy transforms them into political agitators who have set themselves against the church and community. The policy is divisive, unpopular with the public, is tearing the Conservative Party apart and will influence absolutely no one in terms of the way they vote in the future.”
Mrs Dorries divorced her husband in 2007 and later began a relationship with a married man although that relationship also ended last year.
