On a sunny Friday morning on the Kent coast, Keir Starmer held a press conference that would have been beyond the wildest dreams of Labour’s most senior strategists just a few weeks ago. Entering the small room near Deal alongside the Labour leader were his shadow home secretary, the prospective Labour candidate for the seat, and Natalie Elphicke, the rightwing former Tory MP for Dover who had shocked Westminster two days earlier by defecting to Labour. Along with the others, she delivered the dream line for Starmer’s team: the Tories were “failing to keep our borders safe and secure”.
Here, seemingly, were the right and left of the political establishment uniting to conclude that, even on the issue of immigration that has caused such strife for Labour throughout the decades, this was the party with a plan. After a thumping set of local election wins, Labour was mopping up an area and a topic the Tories had previously believed was one of their strongest suits.
There was no sign, however, of instant cut-through to the dog walkers and shoppers in Dover on Friday, as Starmer delivered his speech on border security down the road. There was a general disillusionment with politics, with politicians described variously as “a load of tosspots” and “all the same” with regularity. Another declined to comment because “you’d have to bleep out every word”. Several others were annoyed about the fact that, having chosen a Tory MP, they had no say over her decision to switch.
Despite Labour’s political coup, some were unconvinced by the extraordinary adoption of an MP who had been seen as more likely to defect to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK than Starmer’s Labour. “[The Tories] can keep her,” said John O’Neill, 68, out for a walk on a sunny morning.
“She’s done nothing at all for Dover. Moving across now – I don’t know what is in it for her, really. But it’s a shame Keir has done it, because I support Labour and I will support Labour but I think it’s a wrong move.
“Put it this way, I think she’s slightly to the right of Genghis Khan. Neil Kinnock said Labour is a broad church, but it has walls. There are limits. And I think they should have looked at those limits.”
If constituents had mixed views, then some local Labour figures certainly didn’t. “Natalie Elphicke is a toxic, divisive figure who has no place in the Labour party,” was the view of Bridget Chapman, a councillor in nearby Folkestone. She added that she had received messages from people “horrified at the decision”. Folkestone and Hythe Labour party drew up a statement declaring it was “shocked and appalled” by Elphicke’s admission. It even called on counterparts in Dover and Deal to apply to Labour’s ruling body to have Elphicke’s membership application rejected. Campaigning should be interesting over the summer.
Labour MPs are wondering if they will have to clap Elphicke at the next meeting of the parliamentary party, as is usually the case with new arrivals. “Slow-clapped is more probable,” said one MP.
When Elphicke entered the House of Commons at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday and sat directly behind Starmer on the opposition benches, only a handful of Labour figures had been told of the defection in advance.
Like that of Dan Poulter from Tory to Labour 10 days before, it had been kept the tightest of secrets. When Starmer got up to speak, he first welcomed the new Labour MP for Blackpool South, Chris Webb, who won the seat off the Tories in the recent byelection. Then he announced the defection of Elphicke to a disbelieving House. “May I also warmly welcome the new Labour MP, my hon friend the member for Dover, to these benches?”
As MPs tried to work out what on earth was going on, he added: “If one week a Tory MP who is also a doctor says that the prime minister cannot be trusted with the NHS and joins Labour, and the next week the Tory MP for Dover – on the frontline of the small boats crisis – says that the prime minister ‘cannot be trusted’ with our borders and joins Labour, what is the point of this failed government staggering on?” The reaction was one of confusion and disbelief across all parties. Poulter’s defection had made some political sense and had a logic to it. He had been uncomfortable in a Tory party that was moving to the right. But Elphicke was the reverse. She was as rightwing as they came and yet had joined Labour.
“If you had told me she was going anywhere, it would never in a million years have been to Labour,” said one Tory former colleague. “Bloody baffling.”
Disbelief among Tories was matched by anger on the Labour side. No Labour MPs believed that Elphicke had truly converted to the “centre ground” politics of Labour under Starmer. There had to be another reason.
Many Labour MPs were incensed that they were now sitting on the same benches as someone who had defended her ex-husband, Charlie Elphicke, after he was convicted of sexually assaulting two women, and was then sent to prison. Some sensed an arrogance at what they believed was a decision by a “small group of clever men at the top of the party” to admit Elphicke. One influential figure said it “gives the absolute lie” to the idea that the party was serious about tackling attitudes towards sexual harassment.
Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley and former shadow minister for domestic violence, said she was shocked by the defection and that Elphicke should apologise for her comments, which would have been “very painful” to her ex-husband’s victims. Elphicke duly did so as Labour, not the Tories, seemed to be suffering the fallout from the defection. “I have previously, and do, condemn his behaviour towards other women and towards me,” said Elphicke as everyone wondered if the coup was turning into disaster for Starmer. “It was right that he was prosecuted and I’m sorry for the comments that I made about his victims.”
The Tories were milking Labour’s discomfort. One former cabinet minister said: “Natalie has earned her place in history by being the only defector ever to cause more embarrassment to the party she defected to than to the one she left.”
The Tory machine went into overdrive to undermine her credibility in every way it could. A very senior Tory described her as “utterly ghastly” in almost every respect. Rumours were spread around that she was in fact still in a relationship with her ex-husband, despite her apology for defending him, and despite having divorced him. She told Saturday’s Daily Telegraph that all such suggestions were completely false: “I am not in a relationship with Charlie Elphicke and I am long divorced from him.”
But around Starmer they held the line. The leader’s team is of the view that outside Westminster, people will take one clear message away from the defection above everything else: that Labour is for everyone.
They want more defections, as many as they can get. There are said to be “active talks” going on with at least two more Conservative MPs who are thinking of switching in the reasonably near future. “Sometimes these things happen; sometimes they come to nothing,” said one senior Labour figure in the know, adding: “What we are now showing is that we are not just the party of the many not the few; we are the party for everyone.”
Another figure on the front bench expressed dismay at those who had the temerity to doubt the leader’s embrace of an ex-Conservative right winger: “Who are these people who think we shouldn’t want a Tory MP to join the Labour party?
“If you start setting limits on who you allow in, you set limits in the voters’ minds about the voters we want. It’s the actual MP for Dover saying we have a better plan for small boats.”
But did this mean there were no limits? “I suppose if Jacob Rees-Mogg wants to join we’d have to think about it … Actually, we wouldn’t take Liz Truss,” said a Starmer loyalist.
Outside Westminster, the ins and outs of the Elphicke controversy seemed of limited interest, and in Dover there was a weariness in general about politicians who claimed to have answers on issues such as immigration. “I don’t know how they’re going to stop it,” said Steven Griffiths, 67. “To be honest, I don’t think they ever will. Labour’s the same. They’re all the same.”
Starmer’s team can be encouraged, however, by the reaction of Linda Godden, out with her mother in Dover town centre. This is a seat that Natalie Elphicke held at the 2019 general election with a majority of 12,278. Labour now has it in its sights. “From Boris and his parties onwards, I’ve become disillusioned with the lot of them,” said Godden, before adding on Starmer: “He seems all right. I mean, give him a chance. See how it goes.”
