Nadine Dorries - how can David Cameron stop her from having the last laugh? - Telegraph No, the "problem" that is Ms Dorries shouldn't have been dealt with this way. Yes, she left her constituents in the lurch when she swapped the Commons benches for the Australian jungle last November. But suspending the whip for a limited period and then swiftly bringing her back into the fold, safe from UKIP's clutches, would surely have been the answer. Her local party chairman Budge Wells was quoted this morning as saying that the Tories were "destroying themselves" by failing to make a decision. Perhaps a slight exaggeration. After all, there's plenty of other ways the party's destroying itself without the assistance of a renegade MP. But I get his point. A Tory MP defecting to Ukip would put lead in Mr Farage's pencil - exactly what the Conservatives don't need after last week's local election mauling. And it could, potentially - though I think it's unlikely - start a stampede for the exit, splitting the Tories. Ominously, Mr Wells says he's tried repeatedly to get answers from the chief whip and Grant Shapps, the Tory chairman, but to no avail. He reckons she'd win at a general election under a UKIP banner. He might be getting somewhat carried away there, but where I believe Mr Wells is on the money is when he says that "MPs should have the privilege of being a Conservative but with the ability to speak out against Conservative policy from time to time when they feel that's the right thing to do." In other words, Tory HQ should have cut Ms Dorries a bit of slack - just like they do the guys. Jesse Norman joined the monster rebellion against the coalition over an elected Lords, yet now he's been rewarded with a seat in Number Ten on the new-look policy unit. Fellow Tory MP Adam Afriyie has been semi-publicly manoeuvring for the leadership, and while he's been roundly mocked, his refusal to back the Prime Minister to take the Conservatives into the next election has gone unpunished. Of course, Ms Dorries isn't as urbane as Mr Norman or Mr Afriyie, and her "two arrogant posh boys" jibe aimed at David Cameron and George Osborne hasn't been forgotten, particularly by the Chancellor. But surely next time she transgresses, the party hierarchy should raise an eyebrow, shrug a shoulder, and say - as Tony Blair did about John Prescott when he landed that punch - "Nadine's Nadine." I've blogged before about what a breath of fresh air independent, trouble-making backbenchers are, when so many of the 650 MPs are, still, pale, male and stale. The sooner the chief whip and his cabinet colleagues realise that the better.