Are the Osbornites coming out for Starmer?

Is there something in the Westminster air? This morning the Times reports that Claire Perry O’Neill– the Conservative MP for Devizes from 2010 to 2019 – has quit the party and lavished praise on Sir Keir Starmer. In an article she praised the Labour leader’s ‘sober, fact-driven, competent political leadership’ and warned that Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt have become too beholden to inter-party factions to ‘deliver the big changes we need in a fact-based, competent way.’

Just a straw in the wind? Or a sign of something more significant? Perry O’Neill was once considered something of a rising star in that great Tory vintage of 2010. Widely seen as being on the left of the party, she nevertheless obtained ministerial office under both David Cameron and Theresa May, having backed Remain in 2016. More significantly, perhaps, she was also considered a member of the ‘Osbornite’ wing of the party; those MPs were close to then Chancellor personally, temperamentally and ideologically during his tenure at the Treasury between 2010 to 2016.