I bring you exclusive news that another Tory MP is in negotiation with Sir Keir Starmer about defecting to Labour. As luck would have it, I can even share with you an edited transcript of Sir Keir’s side of a recent telephone conversation between the Labour leader and his latest recruit from the Conservative side of the Commons.
KS: “Crikey. This will be a jaw-dropper. Everyone thought they’d never seen anything like it when Natalie crossed the floor. You flipping to us? It’s going to be the mother of all bombshells… For sure, we can say we’re in complete agreement that Rishi is utterly useless. The man couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag… I hope you understand why I can’t make any promises about a peerage. We don’t want people jeering that we’ve done a grubby deal... Yeah, you’re right, the shadow cabinet aren’t going to be happy. So what? I won’t be telling them before the deed is done… Not a problem. Of course, we can invent a role for you. When Dan crossed over, we agreed to say he was going to advise us on health. We’ve confected something about housing to make Natalie feel important and wanted… Growth! That’s your big thing, right? Mine too! How about a seat on Rachel’s economics commission? It would be invaluable to learn from your frontline experience… So we’re agreed. Matt and Morgan say we should do the big reveal on Wednesday. Just brilliant to have you on board, Liz.”
Well, why not? If Natalie Elphicke, cheerleader for Liz Truss, devotee of Boris Johnson, Brextremist “Spartan” and a woman with a reputation for being as rabidly rightwing as they come, if she is judged acceptable to become a Labour MP, why not the Trusspot herself?
When the MP for Dover and Deal was presented to Sir Keir as interested in defection, it is not hard to see why he and the tight group of aides he discussed it with reckoned that this was an offer too salivating to refuse. Person who used to say vote Tory now urges everyone to go Labour. Tick. Further humiliation for Rishi Sunak as another rat abandons his sinking ship. Tick. More proof that it’s game over for the Tories. Tick. Additional resonance because she represents the major port on the frontline of the government’s failure to keep its promises to stop unregulated migration. Tick. Great drum roll for the Labour leader’s visit to the defector’s constituency to deliver a “keynote” speech on how he would deal with the small boats. Tick.
“I’m completely fine with it,” says one of the non-squeamish members of the shadow cabinet. “We’ve got an election to win. The name of the game is beating the Tories. When an opportunity like this comes along, you can’t pass it up.” It is fair to say that this is by no means a universal view. When told, late on, that the defection was imminent, the Labour chief whip, Sir Alan Campbell, cautioned Sir Keir to expect some unhappiness in his own ranks. The leader’s team told themselves they could live with a bit of that. What they did not anticipate was the scale and the intensity of the backlash.
Some of it is coming from residual Corbynites and other elements of the left in parliament and the media, for whom this is confirmatory proof that there is no position or person so rightwing that Sir Keir might not throw his arms around them. It has also given them a good excuse to ask why, if Ms Elphicke is a fit and proper person to be a Labour MP, isn’t Diane Abbott getting the party whip back? To this sort of criticism, Sir Keir’s people shrug that it is the usual suspects making the usual complaint about him because they’ve never grasped that nothing matters more than securing power.
The much bigger concern for the Labour leader is how quickly astonishment turned into antagonism among mainstream Labour folk. One Labour MP speaks for many when they say: “I get the bigger picture, I get what a coup it was to do it at PMQs. But people are finding this very hard to swallow.”
This might have been foreseen because Ms Elphicke has landed in Labour with more baggage than a luggage carousel at Heathrow during the school summer holidays. Some feel nauseous about admitting a woman with such a plump back catalogue of hard rightery that it would have made much more sense if she had switched to Reform. Others have gagged on her behaviour in relation to her former husband and predecessor as Dover’s MP, Charlie, the notorious “naughty Tory” who was jailed for two years for sexually assaulting two women. Ms Elphicke was given a one-day ban from the Commons for improperly trying to influence the trial judge and protested her then husband’s innocence by claiming that he was “charismatic and attractive”, an “easy target for dirty politics and false allegations” and had suffered “a terrible miscarriage of justice”. It has taken her a long time to disown those remarks. In fact, she only offered her regrets after female Labour MPs responded to her parachute drop on to their benches with fury about her past victim-blaming.
As for her politics, she once attacked Marcus Rashford for campaigning for free school meals, one of many reasons to doubt whether she has any genuine affinity with her new party. When Dan Poulter left the Conservatives for Labour a couple of weeks ago, the conversion was not wildly implausible. He was a centrist Tory and a doctor specialising in mental health. That gave some credibility to his contention that he had jumped because his former party was falling into the clutches of the nationalist right and he believed Labour would do better by the NHS.
About the latest switcheroo, Steve Baker, the erstwhile “hard man” of Brexit, quipped: “I have been searching in vain for a Conservative MP who thinks themself to the right of Natalie Elphicke.” I’ve got a bag of magic beans to sell you if you buy the idea that she has sprinted down the road to Damascus to suddenly become a committed convert to social democracy.
Nor is it credible that Sir Keir really thinks there’s been a Labour MP fighting to get out of her hard-right shell. It is not so long ago that she was deriding him as “Sir Softie” who would “rip up our world-leading partnership to remove illegal migrants to Rwanda” while claiming that Labour “do not want to stop the boats”.
The broader reason for the unease rippling through Labour’s ranks is that it feeds into the anxiety that there is no compromise with their party’s values that the leadership might not make in pursuit of what it sees as potential electoral advantage. It is also worth asking whether this defection is more harm than help to the advancement of the Labour cause. Voters may have a general preference for broad-church parties, but they also tend to like them to come with sturdy walls and some pillars of principle.
Perhaps there was a part of the Labour leader’s brain that was flashing warning lights when he agreed to bring the Elphicke into the room. I thought so when he and his newest MP appeared together for a brief photo-op in his parliamentary office. The body language, especially his, screamed awks. Copulating porcupines look more relaxed than they did.
Apologists for rolling out a welcome mat for Ms Elphicke will insist that, whatever turbulence it has caused among Labour people, it is worth it for the damage another defector inflicts on the prime minister. A key word in that sentence is another. It is surely not a revelation to anyone that the Tories are a deeply divided and demoralised outfit and that many of their MPs are jumping before they are pushed. This was already priced-in on the market place of political reputations.
What’s not settled, as we approach the election, is a consensus view about Sir Keir. It is still up for argument both within his party and among voters whether he is a firmly anchored leader of genuine conviction, the case made by his allies. Or is he, as enemies to both right and left contend, a ruthless opportunist who will say or do anything to get power? The willingness to clasp hands with someone with the history of Natalie Elphicke is much easier for his foes to explain than it is for his friends.
The next time, if there’s a next time, a Conservative MP of her ilk offers to come over to Labour, Sir Keir might be better advised to say thanks, but no thanks.
• Andrew Rawnsley is the Chief Political Commentator of the Observer
