‘If Jacob Rees-Mogg wants to join us’ … Was Natalie Elphicke’s defection a step too far for Labour? | Immigration and asylum
Oon a sunny Friday morning on the Kent coast, Keir Starmer held a press conference that would have exceeded the wildest dreams of Labour’s most senior strategists just a few weeks ago. Into the small room near Deal, the Labor leader was joined by his shadow home secretary, Labour’s future candidate for the seat and Natalie Elphick, a right-wing former Tory MP for Dover who shocked Westminster two days earlier by defecting to Labour. Along with the others, she delivered the dream line for Starmer’s team: the Tories have “failed to keep our borders safe and secure”.
Here, it seems, the right and left of the political establishment have come together to conclude that even on the immigration issue that has caused such struggles for Labor over the decades, this is the party with a plan. After a series of victories in the local electionsLabor was sweeping an area and subject that the Tories had previously considered one of their strongest points.
However, there was no sign of any immediate disruption to dog walkers and shoppers in Dover on Friday as Starmer gave his speech on border security along the way. There was a general disillusionment with politics, with politicians regularly described variously as “bunches of crooks” and “all the same”. Another declined to comment because “you’d have to drown out every word.” Several others were annoyed that, having elected a Tory MP, they had no say in her decision to switch.
Despite Labour’s political coup, some were unconvinced by the extraordinary admission of an MP who was thought to be more likely to defect to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK than to Starmer’s Labour. “[The Tories] can hold her,” said John O’Neill, 68, on a walk one sunny morning.
“She has done absolutely nothing for Dover.” Moving on now – I don’t know what’s up with her, really. But it’s a shame that Keir did it because I support Labor and I will support Labor but I think it’s the wrong move.
“Put it this way, I think she’s a little to the right of Genghis Khan. Neil Kinnock said Labor was a broad church but it had walls. There are limits. And I think they should have looked at those limits.
If voters had mixed views, then some local Labor figures certainly did not. “Natalie Elphick is a toxic, divisive figure who has no place in the Labor Party,” said Bridget Chapman, a councilor in nearby Folkestone. She added that she had received messages from people “appalled by the decision”. Folkestone and Hythe Labor Party issued a statement saying they were “shocked and appalled” by Elphicke’s admission. He even called on his colleagues in Dover and Deal to petition the Labor governing body to have Elphicke’s membership application rejected. The campaign should be interesting in the summer.
Labor MPs are wondering if they will have to slap Elphike at the next parliamentary party meeting, as they usually do with new arrivals. “Slow clapping is more likely,” said one MP.
When Elphick walked into the House of Commons at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday and sat directly behind Starmer on the opposition benches, only a handful of Labor figures were given advance notice of the defection.
Like that of Dan Poulter from the Tories to Labor 10 days before it is kept in the strictest of secrets. When Starmer rose to speak, he first welcomed the new Labor MP for Blackpool South, Chris Webb, who won the non-Tory seat in the last by-election. He then announced Elphike’s defection to an unbelieving house. “May I also warmly welcome the new Labor MP, my dear friend the member for Dover, to these benches?”
As MPs scrambled to figure out what on earth was going on, he added: “If one week a Tory MP who is also a doctor says the Prime Minister can’t be trusted with the NHS and joins Labor and next week the Tory MP for Dover – on the frontline of the small boat crisis – says the Prime Minister “cannot be trusted” on our borders and joins Labour, what is the point of this failed government faltering?” The reaction was one of confusion and disbelief on all sides. Polter’s defection made some political sense and logic. He felt uncomfortable in a Tory party that was drifting to the right. But Elphic was the opposite. She was as right-wing as they come, yet she had joined Labour.
“If you had told me she was going to go anywhere, it would never in a million years be with Labour,” said a former Tory colleague. “Bloody confusion.”
Distrust among the Tories was matched by anger on the part of Labour. Not a single Labor MP believed that Elphick had really become the politics of the ‘centre’ of the Labor Party under Starmer. There had to be another reason.
Many Labor MPs were outraged that they were now sitting on the same benches as someone who had defended her ex-husband, Charlie Elphick, after he was convicted of sexually assaulting two women and then sent to prison. Some felt arrogance in what they said was a decision by “a small group of smart men at the top of the party” to admit Elphick. One influential figure said it “gives the absolute lie” to the idea that the party is serious about tackling attitudes to sexual harassment.
Jess Phillips, the Labor MP for Birmingham Yardley and a former shadow minister for domestic violence, said she was shocked by the defection and that Elphick should apologize for her comments, which would be “very hurtful” to her ex-husband’s victims. Elphick duly did, as it appeared that Labour, not the Tories, suffered the consequences of the defection. “I have condemned his behavior before and I condemn his behavior towards other women and towards me,” Elphike said as everyone wondered if the coup was turning into a disaster for Starmer. “It was right that he was prosecuted and I regret the comments I made about his victims.”
The Tories milked Labour’s discomfort. One former cabinet minister said: “Natalie has earned her place in history by being the only defector who caused more embarrassment to the party she joined than the party she left.”
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The Tory machine has stepped up to undermine trust in her in every way possible. One very senior Tory described her as “absolutely disgusting” in almost every way. There were rumors that she was still in a relationship with her ex-husband, despite her apologies for defending him and even though she divorced him. She said on Saturday Daily Telegraph that all such suggestions are completely false: “I’m not in a relationship with Charlie Elphick and I’m long divorced from him.”
But around Starmer they held the line. The leader’s team believes that people outside Westminster will take one clear message from the defection above all else: that Labor is for everyone.
They want more defectors as much as they can. There are said to be “active discussions” with at least two more Conservative MPs who are looking to change posts in the relatively near future. “Sometimes these things happen; sometimes they lead to nothing,” said a senior Labor figure familiar with the matter, adding: “What we’re showing now is that we’re not just the party of the many, not the few; we are the party for everyone.”
Another frontbench figure expressed dismay at those who had the audacity to question the former Conservative right-wing leader’s embrace: “Who are these people who think we shouldn’t want a Tory MP to join the Labor Party?
“If you start putting limits on who you let in, you’re putting limits in voters’ minds about the voters we want. This is the actual Dover MP saying we have a better plan for small boats.
But does that mean there are no limits? “I guess if Jacob Rees-Mogg wants to come in we’ll have to think about that… We wouldn’t actually take Liz Truss,” said a Starmer loyalist.
Outside Westminster, the subtleties of the Elphick row seemed of limited interest, and in Dover there was a general weariness with politicians claiming to have answers to issues such as immigration. “I don’t know how they’re going to stop it,” said Stephen Griffiths, 67. “To be honest, I don’t think they ever will. The work is the same. They are all the same.”
However, Starmer’s team can be encouraged by the reaction of Linda Godden, out with her mother in Dover city centre. This is a seat that Natalie Elphick took in the 2019 general election with a majority of 12,278 votes. Labor now has it in its sights. “From Boris and his parties on, I’ve been disappointed with a lot of them,” Godden said, before adding of Starmer: “He looks good. I mean, give him a chance. See how it goes.”
