Emily Maitlis, are you unhinged? Let me explain why I ask such an apparently offensive question.
It is the inquiry the former BBC Newsnight presenter hurled at me recently after I’d rearranged my diary to appear on The News Agents, the podcast she co-hosts with fellow ex-BBC staffer Jon Sopel.
I had no particular desire to appear on The News Agents but, as a former Cabinet minister, I’m happy to comment on politics — and I’ve always found Sopel to be kind and well-mannered.
I won’t, however, tolerate being spoken to like that by a woman with an orange permatan to rival Donald Trump‘s — and who clearly hates the Conservatives with a loathing matched only by Angela ‘Tory Scum’ Rayner.
I explained in no uncertain terms why I suspected that, if anyone was ‘unhinged’, it was the Kensington-dwelling Maitlis herself.
Former BBC Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis lives much of her life online, writes Nadine Dorries
It was crystal clear what she was up to, intent on using my appearance on her podcast to confect a row that would go viral on social media.
Maitlis lives much of her life online: she is happy to retweet random people who praise her ‘phenomenal journalism’, but I’m not sure how phenomenal it really is.
Only this week, she confidently told her 600,000 Twitter followers that President Joe Biden ‘will continue in the role until November’. This, as an official correction swiftly pointed out, was rubbish: if Biden stays on, he will remain President until his successor takes up the role in January.
But accuracy is perhaps not always Maitlis’s main concern. Instead, she seems obsessed with remaining ‘relevant’, having failed to replicate the success of her car-crash Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew five years ago.
The encounter, in which the Duke of York discussed his friendship with the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, ended any chance that Andrew might have had of resuming a frontline role in the Royal Family.
But, let’s be honest: the credit for the Epstein interview shouldn’t go to Maitlis. As the Netflix drama-documentary, Scoop, makes clear, it was the producer, author and journalist Sam McAlister — superbly played by Billie Piper — who spent months wooing Andrew’s camp, arranging meetings and drafting questions, despite being paid a fraction of Maitlis’s £325,000 taxpayer-funded salary.
I am not the only victim of Maitlis’s penchant for vendettas. Last week, she travelled to America for the Republican National Convention (‘the conversations here are utterly dystopian,’ she claimed hysterically) on a mission to find Right-wingers to attack on her cosy ‘centrist’ podcast.
This was just days after Donald Trump had been shot. When Maitlis encountered Trump’s acquaintance Nigel Farage, she asked the Reform leader why he was there.
Farage explained: ‘I felt it was the right thing … to support my friends when they are having a tough time.’
Maitlis asked: ‘Do you think he [Trump] is having a tough time right now?’
Farage, baffled at her oddly unfeeling question, replied: ‘He nearly died.’
Maitlis could only robotically repeat: ‘Do you think he’s having a tough time right now?’ A bemused Farage reiterated: ‘He nearly died!’
Maitlis waited for what seemed an eternity before she moved the mic back to herself. Her myopic and failed quest to produce clickbait television and her journalistic incompetence were equally extraordinary.
Perhaps my most illuminating encounter with Maitlis came on election night earlier this month, when I was a guest on Channel 4’s Britain Decides.
She was one of the presenters, and I was forced to put up with naked hostility and unbelievable rudeness. With an inner sigh, I tolerated her constantly turning away in scorn when I spoke, as well as her eye-rolling condescension.
But when I stood up to leave at 9am after a long night in the studio and bid farewell to my fellow panellist, former SNP MP Mhairi Black, I got a revealing insight into Maitlis.
Mhairi had decided to stand down in order to remove herself from the toxic environment of Westminster. We couldn’t be further apart politically but I had always liked and admired her — so, as I left, I gave her a big hug and wished her well, telling her that she had a great future.
Maitlis was watching, and the look on her face was enough to tell us that she was shocked by this human display of mutual affection and respect.
‘Well, my goodness, I never expected to see that!’ she cried, in an astounded tone of voice.
Mhairi and I were confused — and then the penny dropped. Maitlis truly believes that people with differing political opinions should be consumed by them to such an irrational degree that they hate each other, and don’t refrain from showing it.
It is a neurotic perspective and one at the heart of much that is wrong in the world right now, especially in the smug liberal-Left bubble that people like Maitlis inhabit: a basic lack of humanity and respect.
Emily, it’s not me who’s unhinged — it’s you.
Don’t let Strictly fans down
Should millions of devoted Strictly viewers be denied their pre-Christmas Saturday night viewing because of the historic behaviour of a few?
The future of the show is in jeopardy following claims from Amanda Abbington and other celebrity contestants that high-ranking BBC executives knew about the aggressive and offensive behaviour of certain professional dancers — and chose to ignore it.
The future of the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing is in jeopardy following claims from Amanda Abbington and other contestants
The world of ballroom dancing is brutal and I hear the training methods used to take amateur dancers to Strictly level would not be permitted in any conventional workplace.
The attitude is very much: put up or shut up. Now I’m not excusing bad behaviour, but the BBC probe needs to be concluded fast and remedial measures put in place.
The show must go on!
The photograph of Prince George released to mark his 11th birthday shows him wearing a touching friendship bracelet.
King Charles has also been spotted wearing one of these fashionable accessories, while Princess Charlotte has been spotted with not one but two.
Writing with a mum’s hat on here, I have a sneaking suspicion that nine-year-old Charlotte may be behind this trend — gifting family members trinkets that are all her own work. And beautifully crafted they are, too.
Storming success
Daisy Edgar-Jones, star of the BBC series Normal People and the film Where The Crawdads Sing, is in America promoting her new movie, Twisters, set to be a hit in cinemas this summer.
I wish the talented Daisy every success, I really do. However, thanks to an upbringing on the backstreets of Liverpool, I know how difficult it is for people to make it on the basis of raw talent alone.
But for my generation it was marginally easier because we predated the rise of ‘nepo babies’ who have parents in the relevant business.
Daisy’s father is Philip Edgar-Jones, director of Sky Arts and head of entertainment at Sky. With a job like that, could he have helped Daisy twist her way into the audition rooms?
Daisy Edgar-Jones in her new movie Twisters, set to be a hit in cinemas this summer