Nadine Dorries & the politics of the Rotten Borough
Rotten Boroughs were Parliamentary Constituencies that existed before the 1832 Reform Act. They mostly returned two MPs and many had at some point been centres of population. However by the late eighteenth century they (there were around 56 of them) had few electors and in effect were the property of the MPs who had their Parliamentary seats there.
William Cobbett in Rural Rides referred to Boroughmongers and a politics of Old Corruption where MPs sat not to represent constituents but for their own personal gain.
When applying the historical term to Nadine Dorries and her Mid-Bedfordshire constituency we need to be careful in making the translation.
Mid-Bedfordshire is not a Rotten Borough in the pre-1832 sense. In fact in 2018 it had 82,000 electors. Dorries has been the MP for the seat since 2005 and her vote in 2019 was around 60%
The issue of course is that she appears to have done little or no work as an MP since Boris Johnson was deposed as Tory leader in July 2022. When she was not on Johnson’s resignation honours list she said she was resigning with immediate effect.
She didnt and continued to draw her Parliamentary salary and allowances at least until another resignation statement on 26th August.
It is a political rather than a personal corruption that is involved here but one that has brought democratic politics into disrepute every bit as much as the Rotten Boroughs did before 1832
Leave a Reply