KEIR Starmer is planning a “secretive” event in England tomorrow amid suspicions there may be another defection to his party, it has been reported.
The Times has reported the Labour leader will be staging an event in Essex on Thursday with an as yet unnamed “special guest”.
It is understood Starmer is to flesh out his five missions and launch a "1997-style pledge card", while shadow ministers are being dispatched across the country for other events on the same day.
Following the defection of hard-right MP Natalie Elphicke from the Conservatives last week, there are rumours another politician could make the move to Starmer's party this week.
Elphicke defected to Labour after attacking the “broken promises of Rishi Sunak’s tired and chaotic government”.
She became the Member of Parliament for Dover in 2019 after the constituency's previous MP - her then-husband Charlie Elphicke - stood down after being charged with three counts of sexual assault committed against two women.
In July 2021, Natalie Elphicke was found to be among five MPs to have breached the code of conduct after attempting to influence senior judges in her husband's sentencing appeal.
She has been accused of lobbying the justice secretary in 2020 to interfere in her then-husband’s trial.
Her defection has not been warmly welcomed by many Labour MPs, with one saying she had been left in tears by the news stressing it was "utterly disgraceful" the "totally right-wing" figure had been accepted by the party.
Former Tory MP Dan Poulter also crossed the floor to Labour a week before.
A working medic, he accused the Government of “failing” on the NHS insisting he had seen a “rightward drift” in the Tory party since David Cameron’s premiership.
Starmer’s five missions were unveiled last year and include making the UK the faster-growing major economy by the end of the first term of a Labour government.
The Labour leader has also pledged to make the UK a “clean energy superpower”, cut health inequalities, reform the justice system and raise education standards.
