The look on Penny Mordaunt’s face was one of disbelief as she watched Natalie Elphicke, the Tory MP for Dover, take her seat for prime minister’s questions just behind Keir Starmer on the Labour benches. After a few moments, the Commons leader got up from the frontbench and crept along to where Rishi Sunak was waiting beside the speaker’s chair, whispering urgently in his ear to prepare him for the unwelcome surprise. Senior ministers weren’t the only ones taken aback by the news of Elphicke’s defection. The Tory MP Steve Baker, once known as the “hard man of Brexit”, said a colleague had joked: “I didn’t realise there was any room to her right.” Stephen Hammond, a Tory MP who has known Elphicke for more than 20 years, said: “If there’s been someone who has done as much as anyone to drag my party away from the centre ground of British politics in the last five years, it’s been Natalie.” One No 10 insider said when they heard Elphicke was about to jump ship, they had assumed it would be to follow fellow hardliner Lee Anderson to the Reform party. The only people more shocked and upset than the Conservatives about Elphicke’s move were Labour MPs. Sources told the Guardian that Starmer himself was challenged about the decision at a parliamentary meeting just after PMQs. “I’m a great believer in the powers of conversion,” the leftwinger John McDonnell told LBC. “But I think even this one would have strained the generosity of spirit of John the Baptist, quite honestly.” But it wasn’t just leftwingers taken aback by the decision to welcome one of the most controversial Tory MPs, who had until recently been a fierce critic of Starmer’s migration policy, on to their benches. “Her hard right views are a big red line. Are we welcoming Nigel Farage next week?” one shadow minister pondered. Asked the same question, Starmer’s spokesperson told reporters: “We have conversations with all sorts of people who want to come and support the party.”
Female Labour MPs were particularly distressed by Elphicke joining their ranks due to her past comments about her ex-husband’s conviction for sexual assault in 2020. There were suggestions that at least one woman has written to complain to the party’s chief whip. One shadow minister attempted to defend the decision. “We’ve got to get out of our comfort zone and win over Tory voters if we’re going to win the election,” they said, before conceding that MPs across the party were unhappy. Starmer’s team, however, believe the defection will show voters who backed the Tories in 2019 that if Labour can attract an MP like Elphicke, who was hardline on Brexit and immigration, the party has changed. Starmer is expected to join Elphicke in Dover, a seat Labour was hoping to take at the election anyway, later this week to drive home the narrative the party can win in all parts of the country, even the south of England. Elphicke’s defection, the second in the past two weeks after the former Tory MP Dan Poulter crossed the floor and blasted the government’s record on the NHS, prompted immediate speculation that more could be on the cards. It is clearly yet another blow to Sunak, after a disastrous set of local election results, which Labour strategists think shows the Tories are a “sinking ship” with little chance of recovery before the general election. But for all the political advantage Starmer’s aides believe Elphicke’s move brings, it has left many on his own side uneasy about the lengths to which he is prepared to go. While that is unlikely to seriously impede Labour’s path to power, it could sour it. Yet for a leadership team so ruthlessly focused on winning, that is a sacrifice they are willing to make.