Elphicke defection baffles Tories at PMQs

If Natalie Elphicke’s defection had much of an effect on the mood of Tory MPs at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, it was largely to leave them looking a bit baffled. Their former colleague was not a clear candidate to cross the floor to Labour. Labour MPs looked a bit confused too, in fairness, having previously seen Elphicke as a bit of an oddball of a very different political persuasion to theirs. She has said she will stand down at the next election, so her new party won’t have to spend much time pretending to be nice to her (defectors are often rather lonely figures at the best of times).

Keir Starmer used his newest MP as the theme for his questions: Elphicke, who is MP for Dover, had complained that she couldn’t trust Rishi Sunak to stop the boats, and so Starmer repeated that line at the Prime Minister.

If one week a Tory MP who is also a doctor says the Prime Minister can’t be trusted with the NHS and joins Labour and the next week, the Tory MP for Dover on the front line of the small boats crisis says the Prime Minister can’t be trusted with our borders and joins Labour – what is the point of this failed government staggering on?

Sunak ignored the mention of Elphicke, who was sitting behind Starmer, and went on to talk about the local election results, including paying tribute to ‘great leaders like Andy Street who leave behind a strong legacy of more jobs and more investment, in sharp contrast to the legacy left by the last Labour government’, which was a letter which was joking that there was no money left.