View all newsletters
Sign up for our free email newsletters

Fighting for quality news media in the digital age.

  1. News
August 28, 2012

MP Nadine Dorries blasts colleague Louise Mensch over support for The Sun

By admin

Tory MP Nadine Dorries has blasted her outgoing colleague Louise Mensch over her support for The Sun’s decision to publish naked pictures of Prince Harry.

Mensch, who announced she was standing down as an MP earlier this month, claimed there was a clear public interest in the photos being published in an interview with the Today programme last week.

It provoked an angry riposte from fellow Tory MP Dorries. In a blog post on the Conservative Home website, Dorries said she was ‘bitterly disappointed’at Mensch’s support for The Sun.

She wrote:

He may have been a foolish Prince, but he is our Prince, and that is why I find the photographs being published by a British newspaper so utterly reprehensible. Newspapers which spent days, if not weeks, covering the funeral of his mother, who was after all literally driven to her death by the media.

There was absolutely no public interest in publishing the photos. It was about a British newspaper chasing profit and failing to support our unique Royal family, who are, after all, just a family, with children like the rest of us who mess up every now and then.

Content from our partners
MHP Group's 30 To Watch awards for young journalists open for entries
How PA Media is helping newspapers make the digital transition
Publishing on the open web is broken, how generative AI could help fix it

It was a private party in a private room. Harry was not photographed paying for sex, taking illegal drugs, or engaging in anything other than a soldier letting off steam on holiday.

And in a further attack on Mensch, Dorries commented:

One of the most unprofessional and undignified comments ever heard in a select committee hearing was when Louise Mensch announced that she had to leave a crucial, televised hearing involving the Murdochs, in order to do the school run.

As she left she schmoozed to James Murdoch, in the witness chair at the time, ‘I believe we have children the same age’. This was stomach turning for female MPs, who act in a professional manner in order not to be judged lacking against our male peers, knowing that hell would freeze over before any male MP would behave in the same way.

Louise has always put her own ambitions first. She has spent her entire time in Parliament void of principle, as an ultimate loyalist Cameroon, regardless of the issues, and then commented in frustration ‘what do I have to do to get promoted?’

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

Select and enter your email address Weekly insight into the big strategic issues affecting the future of the news industry. Essential reading for media leaders every Thursday. Your morning brew of news about the world of news from Press Gazette and elsewhere in the media. Sent at around 10am UK time. Our weekly does of strategic insight about the future of news media aimed at US readers. A fortnightly update from the front-line of news and advertising. Aimed at marketers and those involved in the advertising industry.
  • Business owner/co-owner
  • CEO
  • COO
  • CFO
  • CTO
  • Chairperson
  • Non-Exec Director
  • Other C-Suite
  • Managing Director
  • President/Partner
  • Senior Executive/SVP or Corporate VP or equivalent
  • Director or equivalent
  • Group or Senior Manager
  • Head of Department/Function
  • Manager
  • Non-manager
  • Retired
  • Other
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
Thank you

Thanks for subscribing.

Websites in our network