Uniparty Britain: Erstwhile Tory MP Natalie Elphicke Defects to Labour

If you feel like you can’t tell the difference between the big Westminster political parties don’t worry, neither can the Members of Parliament. The Conservatives have lost a second MP to Labour in as many weeks with Natalie Elphicke defecting to the opposite benches.

Elected in 2019 for the Conservatives as a replacement for her husband, Charlie, who was kicked out of Parliament after being charged with sexual harassment, Natalie Elphicke has defected to the opposition Labour Party. The switch was apparently timed for the weekly meeting of the House of Commons with the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for questions, and so to maximise embarrassment for Elphicke’s erstwhile boss.

Expressing her stated reasons for leaving the Conservative Party and moving seamlessly to what ought to be their sworn political enemies, Elphicke said: “When I was elected in 2019, the Conservative Party occupied the centre ground of British politics… We need to move on from the broken promises of Rishi Sunak’s tired and chaotic Government.”

Elphicke also specifically called out the now-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for having been behind the palace coup that brought down Boris Johnson in 2022 and which — by circumlocutious route — saw Sunak become leader himself. The politician spoke at greatest length on housing policy, castigating the government for not building enough homes — leading to homelessness, she notes — but while neglecting the demand-side issue caused by mass migration.

That omission is notable given Elphicke has spoken out on migration issues in the past, although Conservative Party politicians do have form on bringing up mass migration — which is an important matter to voters — for political expediency without any intention of delivering on such rhetoric.

So from one centrist party to another a Conservative MP goes, just in time for the Tories to receive what is likely to be an apocalyptic drubbing at the forthcoming general election and for them to be — quite possibly — replaced in government by Labour. For centrist Members of Parliament this is likely not a hard leap to make, after all the Conservatives have performed so abominably badly on core right wing policies like taxes and mass migration they are even now being credibly attacked from the left on these matters.

Elphicke’s crossing of the floor to the opposition benches is the second such defection in just two weeks. At the end of April Dan Poulter —  a former government minister and also of the centrist wing — defected to Labour, saying how much the party had come to conform to his own views since the hard-left element was purged, seeing it move towards the centre.