Analysis
Admitting Elphicke leaves some in Labour asking
how far Starmer will go
Pippa
Crerar
Political
editor
Brexit and
immigration hardliner surprises politicians from both sides with her defection
Wed 8 May
2024 19.54 BST
The look on
Penny Mordaunt’s face was one of disbelief as she watched Natalie Elphicke, the
Tory MP for Dover, take her seat for prime minister’s questions just behind
Keir Starmer on the Labour benches.
After a few
moments, the Commons leader got up from the frontbench and crept along to where
Rishi Sunak was waiting beside the speaker’s chair, whispering urgently in his
ear to prepare him for the unwelcome surprise.
Senior
ministers weren’t the only ones taken aback by the news of Elphicke’s
defection. The Tory MP Steve Baker, once known as the “hard man of Brexit”,
said a colleague had joked: “I didn’t realise there was any room to her right.”
Stephen
Hammond, a Tory MP who has known Elphicke for more than 20 years, said: “If
there’s been someone who has done as much as anyone to drag my party away from
the centre ground of British politics in the last five years, it’s been
Natalie.”
One No 10
insider said when they heard Elphicke was about to jump ship, they had assumed
it would be to follow fellow hardliner Lee Anderson to the Reform party.
The only
people more shocked and upset than the Conservatives about Elphicke’s move were
Labour MPs. Sources told the Guardian that Starmer himself was challenged about
the decision at a parliamentary meeting just after PMQs.
“I’m a
great believer in the powers of conversion,” the leftwinger John McDonnell told
LBC. “But I think even this one would have strained the generosity of spirit of
John the Baptist, quite honestly.”
But it
wasn’t just leftwingers taken aback by the decision to welcome one of the most
controversial Tory MPs, who had until recently been a fierce critic of
Starmer’s migration policy, on to their benches.
“Her hard
right views are a big red line. Are we welcoming Nigel Farage next week?” one
shadow minister pondered. Asked the same question, Starmer’s spokesperson told
reporters: “We have conversations with all sorts of people who want to come and
support the party.”
Female
Labour MPs were particularly distressed by Elphicke joining their ranks due to
her past comments about her ex-husband’s conviction for sexual assault in 2020.
There were suggestions that at least one woman has written to complain to the
party’s chief whip.
One shadow
minister attempted to defend the decision. “We’ve got to get out of our comfort
zone and win over Tory voters if we’re going to win the election,” they said,
before conceding that MPs across the party were unhappy.
Starmer’s
team, however, believe the defection will show voters who backed the Tories in
2019 that if Labour can attract an MP like Elphicke, who was hardline on Brexit
and immigration, the party has changed.
Starmer is
expected to join Elphicke in Dover, a seat Labour was hoping to take at the
election anyway, later this week to drive home the narrative the party can win
in all parts of the country, even the south of England.
Elphicke’s
defection, the second in the past two weeks after the former Tory MP Dan
Poulter crossed the floor and blasted the government’s record on the NHS,
prompted immediate speculation that more could be on the cards.
It is
clearly yet another blow to Sunak, after a disastrous set of local election
results, which Labour strategists think shows the Tories are a “sinking ship”
with little chance of recovery before the general election.
But for all
the political advantage Starmer’s aides believe Elphicke’s move brings, it has
left many on his own side uneasy about the lengths to which he is prepared to
go.
While that
is unlikely to seriously impede Labour’s path to power, it could sour it. Yet
for a leadership team so ruthlessly focused on winning, that is a sacrifice
they are willing to make.
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