Right-wing Tory MP Natalie Elphicke has defected to Labour, hitting out at the “broken promises of Rishi Sunak’s tired and chaotic government”. The move has raised eyebrows across Westminster given some of her previous comments.
Thursday 9 May 2024 06:55, UK
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It has been fewer than two years since Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves told Tory MP Natalie Elphicke to “f*** off” for criticising Marcus Rashford at the Euros.
Now they are colleagues.
Ms Elphicke crossed the floor of the House of Commons to join Labour ahead of Prime Minister’s Questions, causing a stir on both sides of the House.
The Dover MP has long been critical of the Labour Party – especially on immigration – but she now says the party has “changed out of all recognition” and is trying to create “a Britain everyone can be a part of”.
Ms Elphicke added that the Conservatives “ousted” Boris Johnson in a “coup led by the unelected Rishi Sunak” – with the party now a “byword for incompetence and division”.
So who is Natalie Elphicke, what are her policies, and why did she defect?
Our political reporter Tim Baker explains…
NATO countries should agree at an upcoming summit in Washington to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence, Lord Cameron will urge later today.
In his first major speech as foreign secretary, the minister will call on Britain and its allies to “out-compete, out-cooperate and out-innovate” their adversaries in an ongoing “battle of wills”.
Lord Cameron will say July’s summit “must see all allies on track” to meet the commitment set out in 2014 to spend 2% of GDP on defence, and then “move quickly to establish 2.5% as the new benchmark for all NATO allies”.
According to NATO, two-thirds of the alliance’s 32 members expected to meet or exceed the 2% target in 2024, up from 11 in 2023.
Last year only five NATO states, Poland, the US, Greece, Estonia and Lithuania, spent more than 2.5% of their GDP on defence, something the UK has pledged to do by the end of the decade.
In his speech, Lord Cameron is also expected to criticise some of Britain’s allies for not doing enough on defence, saying NATO needs to “adopt a harder edge for a tougher world”.
He will say: “If Putin’s illegal invasion teaches us anything, it must be that doing too little, too late, only spurs an aggressor on.
“I see too many examples in this job of this lesson not having been learnt.
“Take the Red Sea, where ship after ship has been attacked. While many countries have criticised the Houthi attacks, it is only the US and Britain that have been willing and able to step up and strike back at them.”
Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to welcome Tory defector Natalie Elphicke to the Labour party has raised a few eyebrows, with one Labour MP describing the move as “utterly disgraceful”.
Ms Elphicke quit the Conservatives just moments before Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, hitting out at Rishi Sunak’s “tired and chaotic government” and accusing the prime minister of failing to deliver on his promise to “stop the boats”.
But her debut as a Labour MP has not been welcomed by all of her new colleagues, with some raising concerns about comments she made after her then husband was convicted of sexual assault.
One Labour MP said: “I think it’s utterly disgraceful.
“She’s totally right-wing and supported her husband when he sexually assaulted women.
“There are Labour MPs still suspended and we’re welcoming MPs who have voted to push people into poverty. I despair.”
Another MP said she had been left in tears by the news of Ms Elphicke’s defection.
Ms Elphicke’s former husband and predecessor as MP for Dover, Charlie Elphicke, was convicted in 2020 of sexually assaulting two women and sentenced to two years in prison.
Although she ended the marriage after his conviction, Ms Elphicke supported his unsuccessful appeal and described the verdict as “a terrible miscarriage of justice”, saying Elphicke had been “attractive, and attracted to women” and “an easy target for dirty politics and false allegations”.
She was subsequently suspended from the Commons for one day alongside two other MPs after trying to influence a judge who was deciding whether to release character references they had written for Elphicke.
Jess Phillips, the former shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, said Ms Elphicke should “account for her actions”.
She told ITV’s Peston: “I’m all for forgiveness but I do think that that needs some explaining.”
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By Faye Brown, political reporter
Nigel Farage would not be accepted into Labour because his values are “completely inimical” to the party, a shadow frontbencher said.
Anneliese Dodds was asked about her party’s “red lines” following the shock defection of former Tory MP Natalie Elphicke to the Opposition on Wednesday.
Some Labour figures have expressed concerns about the move, given that the Dover MP has repeatedly attacked Labour over migration and was seen as being on the right of her party.
Ms Dodds told the Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge that she had not been contacted by anybody “to say they didn’t want that decision to have been taken”, following reports Sir Keir Starmer has faced a hostile response.
Asked if Mr Farage would be welcome if he wanted to join Labour, Ms Dodds said: “Nigel Farage is someone who is well outside any kind of Labour values.
“He has proven that time and time and time again.”
Read the full story here:
Our political editor Beth Rigby has just been giving her view on a shocking day in Westminster that saw Natalie Elphicke dramatically cross the floor to the Labour benches as PMQs was getting underway.
Beth says: “It’s clearly a body blow to a prime minister that’s just had the worst defeat for the Conservative Party in 40 years, and then has the spectacle of an MP crossing the floor as he’s in the House.
“It caught everyone by surprise.”
But she adds that it’s “not completely straight forward for Keir Starmer too tonight.”
She says she has spoken to “a number of MPs”, and “there is a lot of unhappiness on the Labour benches”.
One senior Labour MP told her they felt “genuinely a bit hurt by it all”.
The MP told her: “I just expected better. Never underestimate the ability of politics to disappoint.”
Another MP on the left of the party said it has “gone down very badly” and there is “disappointment” and “disbelief” across the party.
That person said: “An opportunist whose virtual entire political activity has been centred upon opposing Labour values is opened with open arms.”
The key issue for Labour, Beth explains, is that Ms Elphicke has always been on the right of the Conservative Party, so her crossing the floor is “quite difficult for some MPs to swallow”.
She says the bigger picture for Sir Keir Starmer is that he has had two defections from the Conservative Party in 11 days – one saying Labour is better on the NHS, and now Ms Elphicke saying the PM has “broken promises on immigration”.
Beth concludes: “Given that is the hill on which Rishi Sunak is fighting his election campaign effectively, that is going to really hurt, and Labour will chalk that up as a win and hope that the MPs complain in private, but keep quiet publicly.”
It’s been a big day in Scotland today, with John Swinney being sworn in as the new first minister and the appointment of his new cabinet.
The Scottish government has confirmed 11 cabinet ministers have been appointed, with 14 junior ministers below them.
This means that there are four fewer ministers in the Scottish government since the start of this year.
And in a sign of what the new SNP first minister’s priorities will be, the “minister for independence” role has been scrapped, and no longer appears on the Scottish government’s website.
The role was first created just over a year ago when Humza Yousaf became first minister.
By Tomos Evans, Wales reporter
Wales’s first minister Vaughan Gething has said he is “entirely relaxed” after being accused of misleading the UK COVID Inquiry.
Nation.Cymru reported on Tuesday that Mr Gething sent a text message in which he said “I’m deleting the messages in this group”.
“They can be captured in an FOI [Freedom of Information request] and I think we are all in the right place on the choice being made,” the message added.
The Welsh news outlet reported the message was posted in a ministerial group chat on Monday 17 August 2020.
“The message that has been published today is a message from me without the context of the discussion,” Mr Gething said at First Minister’s questions.
You can read more below:
At Westminster today, we’ve seen Sir Keir Starmer accused of taking Labour rightwards after welcoming former Tory MP Natalie Elphicke, who defected just before PMQs.
Up in Scotland, are the SNP going in a similar direction?
New party leader and first minister John Swinney has just been speaking about his cabinet, which notably includes former leadership candidate Kate Forbes as his deputy.
Our Scotland correspondent Connor Gillies says “she was promised a significant and senior role”, having chosen not to run for the leadership again after her failed attempt last year.
She got almost half the vote but lost to Humza Yousaf.
The progressive Scottish Greens, who were in coalition with Mr Yousaf’s SNP until they were turfed out last month, sparking his downfall, are “not particularly pleased” with Ms Forbes’s appointment.
There’s “a sense the SNP is taking a lurch to the right”, says Connor, given her more socially conservative views.
That charge has been denied by Mr Swinney, who has vowed “to be a first minister for everyone, whether you’re in the LGBT community or not”.
Ms Forbes has previously said she would have voted against gay marriage and the government’s gender reform laws, and that her faith means she thinks having children outside marriage is “wrong”.
Connor says the disquiet her appointment will cause among some in the Scottish parliament is a sign of how tough a job Mr Swinney has to improve the sense of unity among MSPs, something he has to do to govern effectively with a minority administration.
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