DR No? A man who dismembers pet rabbits? The Movement? Michael Gove? Thumper? Bambi? Peeing in the handbags of grandmothers? What can it all mean?

A weird silence has greeted claims made by Nadine Dorries in her new book, The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson, about a sinister, secret cabal running 10 Downing Street. This could be because Ms Dorries, the former Culture Secretary, is best known as a writer of fiction. Or perhaps the claims are so explosive and disturbing that no one knows what to say and is trying to process them.

Has she been “played” herself or is she on the money, bravely taking on sinister figures with a moral compass pointing to “Loopy”?

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First, who are these alleged sinister figures? Well, Dr No is said to be a shadowy fixer employed by the Conservative Party since the 1990s, with full access to No 10. Once, while on remand in prison for alleged arson, it says here, he had his ex-girlfriend’s little brother’s pet rabbit chopped into bits, which were nailed to the door of the family’s house. I see.

The alleged No sits at the centre of The Movement, as the secret cabal is called. Another major player is named by Ms Dorries as Dougie Smith. Dougie is an alleged Scotsman, as you can tell by the fact that, in one of the few available photographs, his suit jacket sleeves come down to his knuckles.

He’s not wearing a tie either, indicating a moral turpitude confirmed by the fact that he was once a luminary in the Federation of Conservative Students (FCS), an organisation so right-wing that then Tory Party chairman Norman Tebbit had it disbanded.

Smith, founder of an agency that offered exclusive sex parties, supposedly told then Prime Minister Boris Johnson: “If you don’t go, I’m going to take you down. I’ll finish you off.” That’s straight from the horse’s mouth, by which I mean the domesticated old hoofer himself: Boris.

Dougie is pals with Michael Gove, whom you know as the Minister for Having a Smackable Face. Gove, says Ms Dorries, “binds all the dark-arts people together”. According to a source named by Ms Dorries as Moneypenny, Gove’s mob conspire around a WhatsApp group called The Order of the Phoenix, after the Harry Potter book (which is beginning to sound relatively believable).

Gove is pals with, er, misunderstood genius Dominic Cummings, the former aide known to everyone at No 10 as “the Dark Lord”. Together, they destabilised not just Boris but Liz Truss and Iain Duncan Smith before him. They appear to treat it all as a game, manipulating power and pretending to support PMs until they get above themselves and have to go. They’d put Sir Humphrey from Yes, Minister to shame.

Even current PM Rishi Sunak is said to be for it, an alleged favourite for years, whose usefulness is now over. Apparently, they now favour Kemi Badenoch, having groomed her, so to say, just as carefully.

You say: “I’m not bothered by any of that. What about Bambi, Thumper and peeing in handbags?” First, the micturition in granny’s accessory: a hypothetical act that Ms Dorries claims the vast majority of MPs - “cowards” - would do to protect their own skin.

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As for Bambi and Thumper, these are names our Nadine has given to two sources who allege the Conservative Party is protecting a serial rapist, a paedophile, and an MP who had sex with a prostitute on a billiard table while four Tory Party MPs cheered him on. None of that involves The Movement, other than, say B&T, as opportunities for blackmail. At any rate, these are not matters fit for a family newspaper. Best left to “the party of family values”.

I’ll be candid with you: reading these revelations, ma heid’s spinning. You know me as a defender of politicians as impeccable public servants. As for decent Tories in the Shires and Edinburgh, what must they be thinking? True, with the exception of The Govester, the alleged baddies are all behind-the-scenes figures. Even Gove got started in it all as a journalist, a group of people whom the public admire and trust implicitly.

Certainly, Ms Dorries’ book seems well-sourced. True, few have put their names on the record, but that ain’t no thing: truth is found more often in the unattributable than in the mangled gobbledegook of official statements.

Both Cummings and Gove’s people have averred that Ms Dorries’ book is fiction, as is her forte. You have to hope so. If it isn’t, then the truth is very strange indeed.