More voters believe Keir Starmer was wrong to allow a rightwing Tory MP into Labour than think it was the right move, after anger from within the party’s ranks over the defection. Natalie Elphicke, the Dover MP, said the Tories had become “a byword for incompetence and division” when she made her shock departure to Labour earlier in May. The party leadership regarded it as a major coup to win the support of the MP on the frontline of the Channel crossings issue that Rishi Sunak has attempted to prioritise. The move came despite concerns among MPs that her views conflict with Labour in a variety of areas. However, the latest Opinium poll for the Observer found that 33% of voters thought it was the wrong call to allow Elphicke to join, with only 16% saying it was the right move. This differed with the public’s view on the decision to let GP and Tory MP Dan Poulter defect two weeks earlier. While opinion was split, 28% backed the move, while 21% disagreed. The public is also suspicious over Elphicke’s backing for Labour. Only 17% think she is genuinely supportive of the party’s policies, while 49% think she is not. A much higher share – 29% – thought Poulter was genuinely supportive of Labour’s current policy platform, although more (35%) still thought he was not.
Elphicke was not previously regarded as a likely Labour defector, instead seen as being on the right of the party and more likely to move to Reform UK. After her move, she apologised for defending her ex-husband and casting doubt on his victims’ testimonies after he was convicted of sexually assaulting two women. It followed an internal Labour outcry over her behaviour. Overall, the defections appeared to have a bigger negative impact on the Tories than a positive impact on Labour. Some 34% of voters say the defections have made them feel more negative towards the Conservatives, while 27% say it made them feel more positive towards Labour.
With Sunak hoping that inflation will fall to 2% this week and that this will begin to change his party’s electoral fortunes, the latest Opinium poll also suggests that more than a third of voters (35%) still think the economy will get even worse in the next year, while 27% think it will improve. Voters think both they and the country as a whole have got poorer over the last year. Labour currently has a lead on every economic indicator that Opinium tests, with the largest leads on improving public services and improving voters’ own financial situations. Its smallest lead over the Tories is on bringing down the national debt and deficit, where it only has a 5% advantage. After a week in which electioneering appeared to begin in earnest, with Starmer, Sunak and chancellor Jeremy Hunt all holding election-style events, Labour has an 18-point lead over the Conservatives – the biggest since February.