Adam Boulton: No one likes a turncoat, but Labour is gambling Tory MP’s defection shows which way political wind is blowing

Published

1 year ago

May 12, 2024

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The Labour Party is in shock over the leadership’s decision to welcome the defection of the right-wing former Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke.

The day before she literally “crossed the floor” before Prime Minister’s Questions to sit on the opposition benches, Elphicke distributed a leaflet in her Dover constituency attacking Sir Keir Starmer.

On Wednesday, as MPs looked on aghast on both sides, he reached back from the front bench to shake her hand, and later posed for smiling photographs with her.

Elphicke is the second Tory MP in a fortnight to switch to Labour. Both she and Dr Dan Poulter have said that they will stand down at the general election and will not fight for re-election in their old constituencies or, at the time of writing, in another seat.

Labour insists that neither of them has been promised elevation to the House of Lords in an upcoming honours list.

Lee Anderson, another recent defector who shifted rightward from the Conservatives, is currently an independent but has suggested that he intends to stand for Reform UK in his Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, constituency.

The saying goes that “nobody likes a turncoat”. That has never stopped some MPs switching their party allegiances.

Whatever party activists and the voters make of the changes, the switchers take a risk with their own careers. Their political fortunes after the change often sink.

Since 1979, when Margaret Thatcher came to power, a total of 202 sitting members of parliament have changed their party allegiance.

More than half of these resigned the party whip or had it withdrawn because of personal grievances or disciplinary procedures.

The real number of those who may be classed as genuine “defectors”, active campaigners intent on making an awkward political point, is much smaller.

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In this parliament, a remarkable total of 39 MPs have changed allegiance. Twenty-four had the whip taken away from them, six have been suspended and nine resigned.

Of these only half a dozen are classic defectors. They are Elphicke, Poulter and Anderson plus Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey who crossed the floor from the SNP to Alba, and Christian Wakeford.

Wakeford was the first switcher from the Conservatives to Labour in January 2022, disgusted by partygate.

He has been selected to stand for Labour in his marginal constituency of Bury South. All the indications are that he has a better chance of re-election there this year than under his old blue banner.

Not many defectors go on to enjoy prominent political careers after making the move.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, ideological civil war raged in the Labour Party.

Twenty-eight Labour MPs (and one Conservative) switched to join Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams in the newly formed, centrist, Social Democratic Party.

Only half a dozen of them made it back into parliament at the 1983 General Election.

The SDP split five years later when party leaders Robert Maclennan and Charles Kennedy were technically defectors again, moving to merge with the Liberals in the new Liberal Democrat Party.

Kennedy was scarred by years of vicious harassment by those who chose to remain with David Owen in the rump SDP, which, in turn, disbanded in 1990 after being overtaken by the Monster Raving Loony Party in the Bootle by-election.

In 2017, centrists were involved in another upheaval in the wake of the EU membership referendum.

Eight Labour MPs and three Conservatives, who all opposed Brexit, resigned their whips. The newly formed Change Party did not prosper.

None of those involved are currently MPs or members of the House of Lords. Two Labour MPs, John Woodcock and Ian Austin, who jumped ship in protest at Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, were subsequently awarded peerages by the Tories.

Elphicke is one of the relatively few female defectors. Two women who left their parties have now circled back to them after dalliances with the Lib Dems.

Emma Nicholson has rejoined the Conservatives and Luciana Berger is campaigning for Sir Keir Starmer.

Very few turncoats make it back into ministerial office.

Reg Prentice was a Labour cabinet minister in the 1970s, as both education and overseas development secretary. But Trotskyist members of the Militant Tendency forced his deselection as Labour candidate in Newham North East.

He was elected as a Conservative in Daventry in the 1979 election and served under Margaret Thatcher as a health minister.

Until this parliament the last time when an MP crossed the floor from one main party to the other was three decades ago in the run-up to Tony Blair’s landslide election victory in 1997.

Defections then, from the Conservatives to Labour, are reminiscent of the moves going on now in anticipation of a Tory defeat.

Alan Howarth and Shaun Woodward, two Tory MPs who flipped straight to Labour, were selected to stand in other safe Labour seats in 1997 and went on to become ministers.

Howarth had previously been a minister in the Conservative government. Woodward had been the Conservative party’s director of communications.

Nicholson, Prentice, and Howarth ended up in the House of Lords along with Peter Temple-Morris, who resigned the Conservative whip in sympathy with New Labour and Hugh Dykes who switched to the Liberal Democrats.

Woodward and Peter Thurnham, another Conservative resigner, remain un-ennobled.

There have been two other significant groups of rebels in recent Conservative history, who were suspended or kicked out of the party.

In 1994, a dozen hardcore Eurosceptics, known as Whipless Wonders to their friends or “bastards” waiting for “the men in white coats” to prime minister John Major, had the whip removed for voting against part of Kenneth Clarke’s budget.

The whip was restored a few months later. These temporarily enforced defectors failed to bring down Major and most have since died.

They will be remembered however for lighting the fuse on the anti-EU bomb which subsequently blew the Tory party apart.

In his push to “get Brexit done” prime minister Boris Johnson brutally withdrew the whip from 21 leading Conservative MPs who were opposed his policy.

Those purged included Rory Stewart, Ken Clarke, David Gauke, Justine Greening, Dominic Grieve, Nicholas Soames and Philip Hammond.

Amber Rudd resigned in protest. The whip was offered back to some of them but only a handful stood for the Commons in 2019. Only two, Greg Hands and Caroline Nokes, plan to run in the next general election. Nicholas Soames, Ed Vaizey and Ken Clarke were awarded peerages.

New defectors are usually rubbished by the party which they are leaving and praised by members of the one they are joining.

That has not been Natalie Elphicke’s experience. Tories are mocking Labour for adopting a right-winger out of sympathy with Labour values.

Labour MPs are professing bewilderment and annoyance. Some female Labour MPs are further outraged that she attempted to excuse her husband, and predecessor as Dover MP, “naughty Tory” Charlie Elphicke, who was imprisoned for sexual assault. The couple subsequently divorced.

Sir Keir Starmer says he is “delighted” to sign her on. He wants former Tory voters to know that his Labour party is a safe harbour for them, especially those most concerned, like Elphicke, by immigration.

She also has an established interest in housing and will be a consultant to Labour on that, we are told.

Most importantly in her resignation letter 43-year-old Elphicke berated Rishi Sunak as “unelected” and the Conservative party of government as “a byword for incompetence and division”.

Labour is gambling that her move to their party will confirm to all who care which way the political wind is blowing – as many defectors have done in the past.

UK

‘A constant game of cat and mouse’: Inside the crackdown on illegal moped delivery drivers

Published

3 hours ago

July 10, 2025

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'A constant game of cat and mouse': Inside the crackdown on illegal moped delivery drivers

The first thing you notice when immigration officers stop a possible illegal moped delivery driver is the speed in which the suspect quickly taps on their mobile.

“We’re in their WhatsApp groups – they’ll be telling thousands now that we’re here… so our cover is blown,” the lead immigration officer tells me.

“It’s like a constant game of cat and mouse.”

Twelve Immigration Enforcement officers, part of the Home Office, are joining colleagues from Avon and Somerset Police in a crackdown on road offences and migrants working illegally.

The West of England and Wales has seen the highest number of arrests over the last year for illegal workers outside of London.

“It is a problem… we’re tackling it,” Murad Mohammed, from Immigration Enforcement, says. He covers all the devolved nations.

“This is just one of the operations going on around the country, every day of the week, every month of the year.”

Just outside the Cabot Circus shopping complex, we stop a young Albanian man who arrived in the UK on the back of a truck.

He’s on an expensive and fast-looking e-bike, with a new-looking Just Eat delivery bag.

He says he just uses it for “groceries” – but the officer isn’t buying it. He’s arrested, but then bailed instantly.

We don’t know the specifics of his case, but one officer tells me this suspected offence won’t count against his asylum claim.

Such is the scale of the problem – the backlog, loopholes and the complexity of cases – that trying to keep on top of it feels impossible.

This is one of many raids happening across the UK as part of what the government says is a “blitz” targeting illegal working hotspots.

Angela Eagle, the border security and asylum minister, joins the team for an hour at one of Bristol’s retail parks, scattered with fast food chains and, therefore, delivery bikes.

She says arrests for illegal working are up over the last year by 51% from the year before, to more than 7,000.

“If we find you working, you can lose access to the hotel or the support you have [been] given under false pretences,” she said.

“We are cracking down on that abuse, and we intend to keep doing so.”

There are reports that asylum seekers can rent legitimate delivery-driver accounts within hours of arriving in the country – skipping employment legality checks.

Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and Just Eat all told Sky News they’re continuing to strengthen the technology they use to remove anyone working illegally.

But a new Border Security Bill, working its way through Parliament, could see companies fined £60,000 for each illegal worker discovered, director disqualifications and potential prison sentences of up to five years.

“I had them all in to see me last week and I told them in no uncertain terms that we take a very tough line on this kind of abuse and they’ve got to change their systems so they can drive it out and off their platforms,” the minister tells me.

The gig economy – so prevalent in every city – creates another incentive for those wanting to risk their lives coming to the UK illegally.

More than 20,000 migrants have crossed the English Channel to the UK in 2025 – a record number at this point of the year.

For some of those who arrive, a bike and a phone provide a way to repay debts to gang masters.

There were eight arrests today in Bristol, one or two taken into custody, but it was 12 hours of hard work by a dozen immigration officers and the support of the police.

As two mopeds are pushed onto a low-loader, you can’t help but feel, despite the best intentions, that at the moment, this is a losing battle.

UK

This flimsy vessel carrying migrants could reach British waters in a few hours’ time

Published

5 hours ago

July 10, 2025

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This flimsy vessel carrying migrants could reach British waters in a few hours' time

We see the boat from a distance – the orange of the life jackets reflected in the rising sun.

And as we draw closer, we can make out dozens of people crowded on board as it sets off from the shore, from a beach near Dunkirk.

There is no sign of any police activity on the shore, and there are no police vessels in the water.

Instead, the migrants crammed into an inflatable dinghy are being watched by us, on board a private boat, and the looming figure of the Minck, a French search and rescue ship that soon arrives.

The dinghy meanders. It’s not heading towards Britain but rather hugging the coast.

A few of the passengers wave at us cheerfully, but then the boat starts to head back towards the shore.

As it nears a different beach, we see a police vehicle – a dune buggy – heading down to meet it.

Normal practice is for French police officers to slice through the material of any of these small boats that end up back on shore.

Two police officers get out of the buggy and wait. A police helicopter arrives and circles above, performing a tight circle over the heads of the migrants.

The police think they might be about to go back on to the beach; in fact, these passengers know that most of them are staying put.

The boat stops a short distance from the shore and four people jump out. As they wade towards the beach, the boat turns and starts to head back out to sea.

We see the two police officers approach these four men and have a brief conversation.

They don’t appear to check the bags they are carrying and, if they do question them about why they left the boat, it is the most cursory of conversations.

In reality, these people probably don’t speak French but they were almost certainly involved in arranging this crossing, which is against the law. But all four walk away, disappearing into the dunes at the back of the beach.

We follow the boat as it chugs off in the direction of Britain, carrying around 50 people.

The Minck returns to shadowing its progress, but its job is limited to offering help if the boat gets into trouble.

Otherwise, if the engine keeps working, then this flimsy vessel will reach British waters in a few hours’ time.

UK

‘A constant game of cat and mouse’: Inside the police crackdown on illegal moped delivery drivers

Published

8 hours ago

July 10, 2025

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