Tory MPs savage Poulter in the group chat

So. Farewell then Dan Poulter. The Central Suffolk MP has today switched from the Conservatives to join the Starmer army, firing off a double-barrelled blast at his former party’s handling of the NHS. The Tories, Poulter says, are now little more than a ‘nationalist party’ who have abandoned ‘compassion’ as part of an increasingly ‘rightward drift.’ Ouch.

One place where there is certainly little compassion for Poulter today is in the Tory MPs’ WhatsApp chat where his onetime colleagues are reacting with a mixture of mockery and fury. ‘Didn’t he step down in 2019?’ asked Alex Stafford, labelling Poulter ‘A nobody trying to be a somebody.’ ‘I didn’t even know he was an MP!’ added Sara Britcliffe while Chris Clarkson went for brevity and labelled Poulter ‘An arse.’ ‘The honourable thing is to quietly announce a departure and slip away,’ declared Conor Burns, ‘To do it a week out from elections in a blaze of publicity suggests some grubby little deal.’