Siri, show me a hollow victory.
It is easy to imagine the glee felt by Keir Starmer’s advisers when Natalie Elphicke MP let them know she was minded to defect from the Tories to Labour. After all, nobody can accuse Dover’s parliamentary representative of being a Tory wet. If she hasn’t passed over your radar before, and you’re trying to place her politically, the better-known Jacob Rees-Mogg or Priti Patel would not be unfair comparisons. If Elphicke – Elphicke! – wants a spot in Labour’s tent, then nobody can accuse Starmer of harbouring some secret lefty agenda!
Yes, the received wisdom would be that a political party welcoming defections from its chief rival has a strong hand. It shows the game is truly up for its opponents. It should, in fact, be seen as a weakness in a democracy, where the difference between two main political parties has become so narrow that its representatives can glide between the two. But even if you disagree with that, Elphicke’s defection is in a completely different category. This is a hard-right Tory MP who cut her teeth scaremongering about refugees and migrants.
“When will The Left admit this is no refugee crisis … but simply illegal immigration,” was the headline of a Mail on Sunday article she penned in 2022. ‘‘Don’t trust Labour on immigration, they really want open borders, warns Natalie Elphicke,” said an article she wrote for the Daily Express only last year. Nobody serious should believe she has changed her views: she just no longer believes that Labour challenges this venom.
When she was heckled by union members at a local protest in support of sacked P&O staff, and was heckled for failing to vote against fire-and-rehire rules, she denounced “militant unionism”. She has generally voted against fewer obstacles for access to abortion. She was a member of the hard-right “Spartan” European Research GroupShe went for the English football icon Marcus Rashford over his campaign against child poverty, suggesting he should stick to football, despite having a second job herself. At the end of 2021, her local Labour party – which she has now joined – asked: “Is Ms Elpicke Kent’s worst MP?”
Elphicke was also given a one-day suspension from parliament for trying to influence a judge presiding over the trial of her former husband, who was convicted of three counts of sexual assault. After his conviction, she claimed he’d merely been punished for being “attractive, and attracted to, women”. Remember this next time you hear Starmer trying to claim the mantle of integrity.
Elphicke reportedly won’t be seeking re-election as a Labour MP, but let’s be clear about what today’s gesture means. Someone as rightwing as Elphicke would not be defecting to Labour if she seriously believed the party was committed to meaningful, progressive change. In her parting statement, she lauded Boris Johnson’s Conservative party for occupying the “centre ground”, suggesting that this is where Starmer has moved to. Elphicke, in other words, believes that Starmer is the true inheritor of the mantle of Johnson.
What do you even say at this point? It has long been clear that Starmer led the most dishonest campaign for the leadership of a major political party in British history: he’s gone from promising a programme of nationalisation, tax hikes for the rich, scrapping tuition fees and lauding free movement, to welcoming a hardcore Tory MP into the fold. Thanks to the state of the Tory party, Starmer was already going to handsomely win a general election: none of this is necessary for him to enter No 10.
Indeed Elphicke’s defection might be another harbinger of why it will all unravel for a Starmer premiership. Starmerism is a political project devoid of principle or, indeed, a soul. Many who have worked with him up-close have observed how little politics he seems to have. He has compensated for that by surrounding himself with what the Labour MP and former Tony Blair adviser Jon Cruddas described as “the most rightwing, illiberal faction in the party”. Trashing his signature £28bn a year green investment fund, and now reportedly watering down the last distinctive policy package still standing – workers’ rights – points in one direction only: a new government which will have no answers to the multiple crises afflicting British society. With no political core, a Starmer premiership will be buffeted by events. Voters who – not unreasonably – expect change after the Tories have been booted will soon ask: where is it?
In the recent local elections, Green and leftwing independent candidates surged, capitalising on discontent with Starmerism. That’s before Starmer is even prime minister and had the opportunity to alienate voters in power – and it’s in the context of the country understandably desperately wanting the Tories out. What Elphicke’s defection tells us is that Labour is now a political party with contempt for the views of millions of progressive British voters.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
