When Nadine Dorries published The Plot last November, she set out in vivid detail her argument that the Conservatives have been controlled for 20 years by a shadowy cabal that decided when to topple their leaders.
At the centre of the alleged, decades-long machinations was an adviser called Dougie Smith, who was said to be acting in cahoots with Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove and Boris Johnson’s ex-chief of staff Dominic Cummings.
Now, with another Tory Prime Minister teetering on the political precipice, Mr Smith has been accused of masterminding moves by rebel Tories determined to oust Rishi Sunak.
After a week in which former Cabinet Minister Sir Simon Clarke called for his party to replace Mr Sunak as leader or be ‘massacred’ in the Election, and a former No 10 special adviser, Will Dry, signed up with the rebels, Ms Dorries says she has been told by a Cabinet Minister that Dougie Smith was helping to stir the insurrection.
Dougie Smith has been accused of masterminding moves by rebel Tories determined to oust Rishi Sunak
Ms Dorries said: ‘The Minister told me, “Dougie is working behind the scenes to remove Rishi, and at the same time, he’s still manipulating things in No 10. Rishi can’t get rid of him, Dougie made him. He knows how Rishi got where he is.” ‘
Mr Dry is now working with a group of rebels who have gathered under the banner of the mysterious Conservative Britain Alliance group, which commissioned a mass poll predicting a Labour landslide.
Those named by Ms Dorries tend to brush off her claims as the work of a ‘fiction writer’, but The Mail on Sunday has independently been told by well-placed sources that Mr Smith is involved with the ‘rebel alliance’, as the group calls itself.
The claim has sparked turmoil in No 10, where Mr Smith is a political adviser paid by the party – although he has not been seen there since Ms Dorries published her book.
In December, the MoS revealed that the rebels were meeting at Giovanni’s, a long-established family Italian restaurant in London’s Covent Garden, to plot their next moves against the Government.
Polls, included a titanic YouGov survey of 14,000 voters, predicted a wipeout for Mr Sunak, with the post-election party reduced to 169 MPs
They drew up what they described as ‘an advent calendar of s***’ – a torrent of destabilising headlines hatched in retaliation for the previous month’s sacking of Suella Braverman as Home Secretary.
The gang have since established a bunker HQ, five minutes’ walk from the restaurant, funded by the same unknown financiers who are commissioning polls and paying plotters’ salaries.
A rebel behind the ‘advent calendar’ said: ‘It’s not an advent calendar any more – we are not sure what to call it in January – but there is still plenty of s**t coming.’
The polls included a titanic YouGov survey of 14,000 voters, which predicted a wipeout for Mr Sunak, with the post-Election party reduced to 169 MPs, and a second which concluded that replacing Mr Sunak with a theoretical, tax-cutting Tory leader would enable the Tories to beat Sir Keir Starmer.
The rebel explains: ‘The purpose of that was clear – to show that there is not a problem with the ‘brand’ of the party. It is all to do with Rishi.’ Downing Street has launched a ferocious effort to flush out the plotters and identify the rebel donors, but so far to no avail.
All one rebel source would say about the backers was that ‘there is more than one backer but fewer than ten’.
No 10 is particularly keen to establish whether there are any links with Nigel Farage’s Reform, whose double-digit polling figures threaten to split the Tory vote – potentially terminally.
Mr Farage is purposefully giving off mixed signals about whether he will stand for the Ukip-successor in the Election, telling some allies that he has signed a new contract with GB News, and would therefore be unable to campaign – while simultaneously pledging: ‘Never say never.’ Tory peer Lord Frost, who helped to organise the ‘wipeout’ poll, has refused to say who funded it. When confronted by the Conservatives’ leader in the Lords, Lord Nicholas True, Lord Frost said he ‘did not think the donors were linked to Reform’, leaving open the possibility that they might be.
Nadine Dorries said: ‘The Minister told me, “Dougie is working behind the scenes to remove Rishi, and at the same time, he’s still manipulating things in No 10. Rishi can’t get rid of him, Dougie made him.”‘
The plotters say they will continue their efforts to topple Mr Sunak in order to save the party from electoral oblivion. One said: ‘It’s going to be death by a thousand cuts. There’s not going to be one massive move. It will be a series of interventions, based around different trigger points. The polls are going to continue to get worse. Reform will continue to gain ground. We’ve got by-elections coming up – they will be a disaster. And then we’ve got local elections.
‘It’s not sustainable for Sunak to carry on in the face of all that.’
A rebel MP said: ‘Simon Clarke was acting on his own this time. But there are 20 of us who would be prepared now to put in a letter [of no confidence in Sunak, to trigger a leadership election]. And that number will just slowly increase every week. Then, on top of that, we have colleagues who aren’t prepared to break cover yet, but who know what Simon was saying was true. And that’s basically the majority of the parliamentary party.’
In her book, Ms Dorries quotes Mr Johnson describing an ‘unexpected and fairly unpleasant’ phone call from Mr Smith, known for his work in the political dark arts.
The former prime minister said Smith – also the founder of an agency that organised exclusive sex parties – told him: ‘I think you should go, you should stand down now and we may let you come back again one day. You are poison, like Nixon. If you don’t go, I’m going to take you down. I’ll finish you off.’
Ms Dorries said last night: ‘As predicted in the book, the plotters would turn on Rishi Sunak, the man Dougie Smith guided into his MP seat and into the Prime Minister’s chair in No 10. They are desperately attempting to cling on to power and the only way left now is via the election of Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick. They have created chaos at the heart of government and via their actions they negatively impacted upon all of our lives. It’s time to remove them from Westminster for all the harm they have done and to restore the principles of democracy.’
Mr Smith did not respond to a request for comment.