Nadine Dorries Goes legal: A Train Crash Waiting to Happen

Must confess I'm a little surprised at this news from Guido, which he got from how you say the horses mouth, or the mare's tail perhaps.

Although, to be fair, Nadine "She'll knock your socks off" Dorries says only this:

“I have instructed and proceeded with legal action. Obviously, I am not going to say anything at all at this stage, other than that.”

She then effects silence, at which point her great admirer the GuFster takes the baton, offering a great narrative of insider news, or is it mere speculation and smears ...? Hard to tell with Guido.

Seems to me there's gotta be a collaboration going on around here. Are Guido, Nadine, and the Tory high ups, presumably including that disgraced 'phone tapper and bin diver Andy Coulson whose own NOTW was the first with the Osborne/Tart-with-a-heart story, all working this tedious story together? Why is Nadine apparently going to the danger?

Guido's text in full:

+++ Nadine : I’m Suing Damian McBride +++ (sic, she doesn't say so)

She was rumoured to have instructed lawyers this week. Her blog confirms it this afternoon “Just For The Record“:

“I have instructed and proceeded with legal action. Obviously, I am not going to say anything at all at this stage, other than that.”

Guido knows for a fact that the untrue story about her was given to some journalists, and it was alluded to in stories, it was then refined for a second more vicious smear attempt by Damian McBride in the infamous Smeargate emails.

Guido understands that legally even if the intended second round of smears were not published widely in print, she has at least two courses of action for slander and defamation because McBride telling journalists the story on his mobile would be slanderous and presumably emailing the smear to Charlie Whelan, Derek Draper and the Unite press officer Andrew Dodgshon would constitute publication (those are the known recipients of the smear at this time). There are likely to be more people who were briefed by McBride…

Knowingly and deliberately libeling someone was until not so long ago a jailable criminal offence, that has if Guido recalls correctly, been taken off the statute books. Guido has said it before; do not mess with Nadine Dorries, she is a Tory tigress …

at April 25, 2009 at 4:51 pm

I'm surprised for a number of reasons. Greatest of which is the apparent fact that in the matter of the emails it appears to have been Nadine Dorries herself that identified herself with great abandon. Has she taken leave of her senses? I wondered. Identifying herself as someone who Damian McBride had suggested a smear story about - in an email to Derek Draper, upon which he apparently did not act, and indeed Draper claims they thought better of the whole enterprise.

The alleged earlier poison dripping by 'phone I had no idea about. But on the emails Nadine appears to have decided, quite unnecessarily, to have put herself into the limelight. She claims to be worried about her parents or her children (sic) at school believing some gossip about daughter/mother that they wouldn't have even have known existed had she not acted as she did.

There are other possible downsides of course. Nadine Dorries has it seems told a fair few fibs down the years. Spun a few world wide webs. Stretched a few points. And uttered much silliness of course. She will not necessarily come out of this all that well.

If Nadine "gets" Damian there will be no-one in the Labour Party at large shedding a tear. But I must say this still looks like a train crash waiting to happen.