“Over a long period of time not a huge amount has been delivered from my department,” she said. Speaking on The Spectator’s “Women with Balls” podcast, Dorries told i colleague Katy Balls how she has transformed her brief. Just seven months in post, Dorries has become a top government figure while running a department long-derived as the peripheral “Ministry of Fun”.
She is applying regulatory controls to big tech, overhauling football governance and campaigning to keep trans athletes out of women’s sport.Īnd all the while she performs as primary cheerleader for Boris Johnson, her political patron. Last week, she shook up British television by confirming plans to privatize Channel 4 and abolish the BBC license fee. Yet there appears to be no stopping the irrepressible Culture Secretary. It was emblematic of the strange world of Nadine Dorries that, as she used a White House event to boast of her government’s world-leading role in creating a safer internet, Westminster was agog with news that one of her Tory colleagues had been viewing porn in the Commons chamber.