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.
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1:05
Defecting Tory hits out at Conservatives
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.
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More than half of these resigned the party whip or had it withdrawn because of personal grievances or disciplinary procedures.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.
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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.
Image: Keir Starmer and Natalie Elphicke in his parliamentary office in the House of Commons. Pic: PA
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.
Image: Boris Johnson withdrew the whip from 21 MPs to ‘Get Brexit done’: Pic: PA
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.
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9:26
Minister ‘shocked’ by defection
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.
A small plane has crashed at Southend Airport in Essex.
Essex Police said it was at the scene of a “serious incident”.
Images posted online showed huge flames and a large cloud of black smoke, with one witness saying they saw a “fireball”.
A police statement said: “We were alerted shortly before 4pm to reports of a collision involving one 12-metre plane.
“We are working with all emergency services at the scene now and that work will be ongoing for several hours.
“We would please ask the public to avoid this area where possible while this work continues.”
Image: A huge fireball near the airport. Pic: Ben G
It has been reported that the plane involved in the incident is a Beech B200 Super King Air.
According to flight-tracking service Flightradar, it took off at 3.48pm and was bound for Lelystad, a city in the Netherlands.
One man, who was at Southend Airport with his family around the time of the incident, said the aircraft “crashed headfirst into the ground”.
John Johnson said: “About three or four seconds after taking off, it started to bank heavily to its left, and then within a few seconds of that happening, it more or less inverted and crashed.
“There was a big fireball. Obviously, everybody was in shock in terms of witnessing it. All the kids saw it and the families saw it.”
Mr Johnson added that he phoned 999 to report the crash.
Southend Airport said the incident involved “a general aviation aircraft”.
Four flights scheduled to take off from Southend this afternoon were cancelled, according to its website.
Flightradar data shows two planes that had been due to land at Southend were diverted to nearby airports London Gatwick and London Stansted.
Image: Plumes of black smoke. Pic: UKNIP
Essex County Fire and Rescue Service said four crews, along with off-road vehicles, have attended the scene.
Four ambulances and four hazardous area response team vehicles are also at the airport, as well as an air ambulance, the East of England Ambulance Service said.
Its statement described the incident as “still developing”.
Image: Fire engines at the airport
David Burton-Sampson, the MP for Southend West and Leigh, posted on social media: “I am aware of an incident at Southend Airport. Please keep away and allow the emergency services to do their work.
“My thoughts are with everyone involved.”
Local councillor Matt Dent said on X: “At present all I know is that a small plane has crashed at the airport. My thoughts are with all those involved, and with the emergency services currently responding to the incident.”
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
Another hint that tax rises are coming in this autumn’s budget has been given by a senior minister.
Speaking to Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander was asked if Sir Keir Starmer and the rest of the cabinet had discussed hiking taxes in the wake of the government’s failed welfare reforms, which were shot down by their own MPs.
Trevor Phillips asked specifically if tax rises were discussed among the cabinet last week – including on an away day on Friday.
Tax increases were not discussed “directly”, Ms Alexander said, but ministers were “cognisant” of the challenges facing them.
Asked what this means, Ms Alexander added: “I think your viewers would be surprised if we didn’t recognise that at the budget, the chancellor will need to look at the OBR forecast that is given to her and will make decisions in line with the fiscal rules that she has set out.
“We made a commitment in our manifesto not to be putting up taxes on people on modest incomes, working people. We have stuck to that.”
Ms Alexander said she wouldn’t comment directly on taxes and the budget at this point, adding: “So, the chancellor will set her budget. I’m not going to sit in a TV studio today and speculate on what the contents of that budget might be.
“When it comes to taxation, fairness is going to be our guiding principle.”
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Afterwards, shadow home secretary Chris Philp told Phillips: “That sounds to me like a barely disguised reference to tax rises coming in the autumn.”
He then went on to repeat the Conservative attack lines that Labour are “crashing the economy”.
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10:43
Chris Philp also criticsed the government’s migration deal with France
Mr Philp then attacked the prime minister as “weak” for being unable to get his welfare reforms through the Commons.
Discussions about potential tax rises have come to the fore after the government had to gut its welfare reforms.
Sir Keir had wanted to change Personal Independence Payments (PIP), but a large Labour rebellion forced him to axe the changes.
With the savings from these proposed changes – around £5bn – already worked into the government’s sums, they will now need to find the money somewhere else.
The general belief is that this will take the form of tax rises, rather than spending cuts, with more money needed for military spending commitments, as well as other areas of priority for the government, such as the NHS.
It is “shameful” that black boys growing up in London are “far more likely” to die than white boys, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has told Sky News.
In a wide-ranging interview with Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the commissioner saidthat relations with minority communities are “difficult for us”, while also speaking about the state of the justice system and the size of the police force.
Sir Mark, who came out of retirement to become head of the UK’s largest police force in 2022, said: “We can’t pretend otherwise that we’ve got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong.
“And we get a lot more right today, but we do still make mistakes. That’s not in doubt. I’m being as relentless in that as it can be.”
He said the “vast majority” of the force are “good people”.
However, he added: “But that legacy, combined with the tragedy that some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities, that creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern.”
Sir Mark, who also leads the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, said black boys growing up in London “are far more likely to be dead by the time they’re 18” than white boys.
“That’s, I think, shameful for the city,” he admitted.
“The challenge for us is, as we reach in to tackle those issues, that confrontation that comes from that reaching in, whether it’s stop and search on the streets or the sort of operations you seek.
“The danger is that’s landing in an environment with less trust.
“And that makes it even harder. But the people who win out of that [are] all of the criminals.”
Image: Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley
The commissioner added: “I’m so determined to find a way to get past this because if policing in black communities can find a way to confront these issues, together we can give black boys growing up in London equal life chances to white boys, which is not what we’re seeing at the moment.
“And it’s not simply about policing, is it?”
Sir Mark said: “I think black boys are several times more likely to be excluded from school, for example, than white boys.
“And there are multiple issues layered on top of each other that feed into disproportionality.”
‘We’re stretched, but there’s hope and determination’
Sir Mark said the Met is a “stretched service” but people who call 999 can expect an officer to attend.
“If you are in the middle of a crisis and something awful is happening and you dial 999, officers will get there really quickly,” Sir Mark said.
“I don’t pretend we’re not a stretched service.
“We are smaller than I think we ought to be, but I don’t want to give a sort of message of a lack of hope or a lack of determination.”
“I’ve seen the mayor and the home secretary fighting hard for police resourcing,” he added.
“It’s not what I’d want it to be, but it’s better than it might be without their efforts.”
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0:39
How police tracked and chased suspected phone thief
‘Close to broken’ justice system facing ‘awful’ delays
Sir Mark said the criminal justice system was “close to broken” and can be “frustrating” for police officers.
“The thing that is frustrating is that the system – and no system can be perfect – but when the system hasn’t managed to turn that person’s life around and get them on the straight and narrow, and it just becomes a revolving door,” he said.
“When that happens, of course that’s frustrating for officers.
“So the more successful prisons and probation can be in terms of getting people onto a law-abiding life from the path they’re on, the better.
“But that is a real challenge. I mean, we’re talking just after Sir Brian Leveson put his report out about the close-to-broken criminal justice system.
“And it’s absolutely vital that those repairs and reforms that he’s talking about happen really quickly, because the system is now so stressed.”
Giving an example, the police commissioner went on: “We’ve got Snaresbrook [Crown Court] in London – it’s now got more than 100 cases listed for 2029.”
Sir Mark asked Trevor Phillips to imagine he had been the victim of a crime, saying: “We’ve caught the person, we’ve charged him, ‘great news, Mr Phillips, we’ve got him charged, they’re going to court’.
“And then a few weeks later, I see the trial’s listed for 2029. That doesn’t feel great, does it?”
Asked about the fact that suspects could still be on the streets for years before going to trial, Sir Mark conceded it’s “pretty awful”.
He added: “If it’s someone on bail, who might have stolen your phone or whatever, and they’re going in for a criminal court trial, that could be four years away. And that’s pretty unacceptable, isn’t it?”
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She pinned the primary blame for the Met’s culture on its past leadership and found stop and search and the use of force against black people was excessive.
At the time, Sir Mark, who had been commissioner for six months when the report was published, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic, which Baroness Casey insisted the Met deserved.
However, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who helped hire Sir Mark – and could fire him – made it clear the commissioner agreed with Baroness Casey’s verdict.
A few months after the report, Sir Mark launched a two-year £366m plan to overhaul the Met, including increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing to rebuild public trust and plans to recruit 500 more community support officers and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic violence, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation.