LONDON — An SNP MP has been cleared of bullying the TV presenter and former Tory Cabinet minister Nadine Dorries following a six-month parliamentary investigation.
John Nicolson, the SNP’s culture spokesperson, was cleared following an extended probe by the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS) into a series of tweets about Dorries while she was culture secretary in Boris Johnson’s government.
Nicolson had posted multiple tweets criticizing Dorries, and liked others describing her as “disgusting” and “a Tory goon.” It marks the first known case of a British lawmaker making a formal complaint of cyberbullying against a fellow MP via the ICGS, an independent watchdog set up in 2018 to clamp down on misconduct within the U.K. parliament.
Dorries must now decide whether to appeal to the Independent Expert Panel, which considers challenges to ICGS decisions.
Nicolson and Dorries are both known for their combative political styles, and both have been outspoken on Twitter in the past. They each have significant public profiles, with Nicolson a former BBC TV journalist and Dorries now hosting her own show on Rupert Murdoch’s TalkTV channel.
No details of the ICGS case have been made public, but according to correspondence seen by POLITICO, Nicolson was investigated over his Twitter activity in November 2021 following a fiery hearing of the House of Commons culture committee at which Dorries — then still a Cabinet minister — gave evidence.
A transcript of the hearing on November 23, 2021, shows Nicolson intensively questioned Dorries about her own past tweets and public comments, including her description of the BBC as “left-wing” and an attack on its “Soviet-style” funding model.
Dorries said she was “not going to answer questions about tweets that I posted 12 years ago, or whenever it was.” Nicolson replied: “It is hard to keep track of your tweets.” Dorries shot back: “Not as hard as it is to keep track of yours.”
Nicolson also pointed Dorries to a tweet in which she described LBC Radio presenter James O’Brien as a “public school posh boy f***wit,” and asked whether this would not fall foul of the government’s planned online safety legislation.
Dorries complained at the hearing that Nicolson’s questions amounted to “personal attacks” and told him: “As many females do, I quite often have to respond assertively to numerous aggressive, unpleasant tweets. Looking at your own tweet history, I wouldn’t say that was something to be particularly proud of either.” Nicolson replied: “There is no abuse in my tweet history.”
In the hours after the session had finished, Nicolson posted, liked or retweeted at least 25 separate tweets criticizing Dorries.
He liked posts that said she was a “horrible disgusting woman,” a “mendacious, vacuous Tory goon,” “thick as two short planks,” and that she had been “rag-dolled by a Scottish MP.”
According to the online Collins English dictionary, the verb “to rag-doll” means “to pummel (a person or a character in a video game) so violently that his or her body flops like that of a rag doll.”
Dorries referred Nicolson to the ICGS over the tweets almost a year later in October 2022, a few weeks after quitting her Cabinet post. The ICGS launched an investigation, finally clearing Nicolson of wrongdoing earlier this month.
Dorries and Nicolson were both asked to sign confidentiality agreements under the ICGS process and declined to respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment.
A House of Commons spokesperson said: “Parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS) operates on the basis of confidentiality for the benefit of all parties. Therefore, we cannot provide any information on any complaint, including whether or not a complaint has been received.”
Nicolson remains the subject of a separate investigation by the Commons privileges committee over an incident last year in which he read out private correspondence he received from House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle to his social media followers.
Nicolson had posted a video on Twitter criticizing Hoyle for declining to refer Dorries to the privileges committee over claims she made misleading remarks on Channel 4. In response, Hoyle issued a rare public rebuke of Nicolson in the Commons chamber for sharing what he said was “a partial and biased account” of their correspondence. That investigation is ongoing.
