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In the past week Labour has welcomed three new MPs – two of whom have crossed the floor from the Conservatives. The latest defection was timed to coincide with the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) and thus to cause Rishi Sunak maximum damage.
The leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, declared himself “delighted” with Natalie Elphicke’s decision to switch. But some Labour MPs, including frontbenchers, tell Tortoise they were “confused, baffled and perplexed” by the arrival of Elphicke, an ardent Brexiteer and immigration hardliner who was once suspended from the House of Commons for trying to influence a judge presiding over the sexual assault trial of her then-husband, Charlie Elphicke.
One shadow minister said: “I get that politics is a journey but she’s completely done a 180. We need to appeal as a party to everyone to win but that doesn’t mean losing our values or what we stand for.”
A backbench MP put it more succinctly, claiming to have been sickened by the move. A third Labour source noted that Elphicke had a “massive poster of Margaret Thatcher on the wall of her Westminster office,” adding: “She is such an antithesis to everything the party believes in.” Conservative MPs were not sorry to see Elphicke go either; one former minister questioned Labour’s due diligence in accepting her.
It’s not unusual for former colleagues to stick the boot in when someone defects – plenty were willing to do the same to Dan Poulter when he quit for Labour ahead of the local elections citing the impact the Tories were having on the NHS. But making sense of Elphicke’s move is a challenge.
What is clear from her parting shot is that she had no love for Sunak, describing him as the “unelected” prime mover behind a plot to “oust” Boris Johnson. She went on to claim that the Conservative party has “become a byword for incompetence and division,” abandoning the centre ground and ditching key pledges of the 2019 manifesto.
Elphicke also mentioned a lack of housebuilding, worsening homelessness and porous borders. All of which sounded more as though she was about to join Lee Anderson at Reform than Labour, a party she has repeatedly attacked.
Reform, the challenger party on the right of the Conservatives, said no conversations had taken place with her. One Reform source said the lack of an approach “rather suggests she is not, and never was, particularly political”.
Elphicke took over her Dover seat from her former husband, having stood by him until he was convicted and jailed for two years. She wrote that he had been punished for being “charming, wealthy, charismatic and successful – attractive, and attracted, to women. All things… that made him an easy target for dirty politics and false allegations.” Two female Labour MPs cited “what she’s said about victims” as one of their causes for concern.