Nadine Dorries has announced she is standing down as culture secretary following Liz Truss’s election as the new Tory leader..
Sources close to the Tory MP – who was a prominent supporter of Truss during the leadership contest – said she believed it was the right time to go.
It is understood she was given the opportunity to carry on in cabinet, but has chosen instead to return to the backbenches.
It is expected that she will now be given a peerage in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list, triggering a by-election in her Mid Bedfordshire constituency.
Johnson will bid farewell to Number 10 this morning before travelling to Balmoral to hand in his resignation to the Queen.
Truss will then meet the monarch and become prime minister, after which she will return to Downing Street to choose the new cabinet.
During the leadership campaign, Dorries - one of Johnson’s closest allies - was an outspoken critic of Rishi Sunak, whose resignation helped bring about the outgoing PM’s downfall.
In one controversial tweet, she likened him to Brutus stabbing Julius Caesar over the way he had turned on Johnson.
She accused fellow Tory MPs of staging a “coup” against the outgoing PM telling BBC Panorama: “I was quite stunned that there were people who thought that removing the Prime Minister who won the biggest majority that we’ve had since Margaret Thatcher in less than three years.
“Just the the anti-democratic nature of what they’re doing alone was enough to alarm me. And for me it was a coup.”
Last week, she told Newsnight Johnson was “the most successful prime minister in a generation”.
She has also condemned the privileges committee’s probe into whether Johnson misled parliament over partygate as a “witchhunt”.
Dorries was appointed culture secretary in September last year, having previously served as health minister.
She was involved in drawing up legislation to curb social media companies through the online safety bill and led controversial moves to privatise Channel 4.
Her term was also marked by a number of gaffes, including confusing rugby league with rugby union at an event to promote the upcoming Rugby League World Cup.
Before being elected to Parliament as MP for Mid Bedfordshire in 2005, she worked for three years as an adviser to the former shadow home secretary and shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin.
Dorries was thrust into the limelight in 2012 when she was suspended from the Conservative Party for appearing on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here without informing the chief whip first.
However she was readmitted to the party in May 2013.