The Conservative MP for Dover has defected to Labour saying her former party has become “a byword for incompetence and division”.
Natalie Elphicke became the second Tory MP to switch parties in two weeks as she crossed the floor of the Commons ahead of prime minister’s questions on Wednesday.
Elphicke said the UK needed to move on from Rishi Sunak’s “tired and chaotic government” and that he had failed the country on border security.
“Rishi Sunak’s government is failing to keep our borders safe and secure. Lives are being lost in the English Channel while small boat arrivals are once again at record levels,” she said in a statement. “It’s clear they have failed to keep our borders secure and cannot be trusted.”
At PMQs the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, welcomed Elphicke to Labour, asking Sunak: “What is the point of this failed government staggering on” when “the Tory MP for Dover, on the frontline of the small boats crisis, says the prime minister cannot be trusted with our borders and joins Labour”. Starmer accused the government of granting migrants “a Tory amnesty”.
A Labour source said Elphicke would not be seeking re-election as a Labour MP. Nonetheless, her admission to the Labour party will be controversial.
She succeeded her then husband, Charlie Elphicke, as the MP for Dover in 2019 after he was suspended from the Conservative party over sexual assault allegations.
In 2020 Charlie Elphicke was found guilty of sexually assaulting two women and jailed for two years. After his conviction Natalie Elphicke, who had been elected a Tory MP by that point, defended him in an interview with the Sun, saying he was “attractive, and attracted to, women” and that that made him “an easy target for dirty politics and false allegations”. She claimed he had been the victim of a “terrible miscarriage of justice”.
She was one of several Tory MPs who were suspended from the Commons and told to apologise in 2021 for being found to have tried to influence a judge presiding over Charlie Elphicke’s trial.
Natalie Elphicke was regarded as a rightwinger during her time in the Conservative party and her comments on migration have repeatedly caused controversy. A year ago she wrote an article for the Daily Express calling Starmer “Sir Softie” and accusing Labour of wanting “open borders”.
She wrote: “Not only have Labour got no plan of their own to tackle illegal immigration, they simply do not want to.”
Speaking in the Commons in April 2023, Elphicke said she had been told by border officials that asylum seekers arriving in small boats after crossing the Channel had “used razor blades to damage and destroy their own fingerprints to avoid identification”.
She also clashed with the England footballer Marcus Rashford, who she said should have spent more time “perfecting his game” rather than “playing politics” after he missed a penalty at the Euro 2020 final. Rashford waged a high-profile campaign over the provision of free school meals.
She later apologised for the remarks, which had led to the deputy Labour leader, Angela Rayner, to say “the nasty party is back”.
A spokesperson for Momentum, the leftwing campaign group that supported Jeremy Corbyn, said: “This hard-right Tory should have no place in a Labour party worthy of the name. It speaks volumes about Keir Starmer that he is welcoming her with open arms, while leaving Diane Abbott out in the cold.”
The prime minister’s spokesperson said on Wednesday that Elphicke’s defection would “come as a surprise to her constituents, given that they are on the frontline of the illegal immigration issue and she has spent years tweeting about how Labour have absolutely no plan to deal with this”.
In a statement announcing her defection, Elphicke said: “When I was elected in 2019, the Conservative party occupied the centre ground of British politics. The party was about building the future and making the most of the opportunities that lay ahead for our country.
“Since then, many things have changed. The elected prime minister was ousted in a coup led by the unelected Rishi Sunak. Under Rishi Sunak, the Conservatives have become a byword for incompetence and division. The centre ground has been abandoned and key pledges of the 2019 manifesto have been ditched.”
“Meanwhile, the Labour party has changed out of all recognition. Since 2019, it has moved on from Jeremy Corbyn and now, under Keir Starmer, occupies the centre ground of British politics. It has accepted Brexit and its economic policies and defence policies are responsible and can be trusted.|
“Most significantly for me, the modern Labour party looks to the future – to building a Britain of hope, optimism, opportunity and fairness. A Britain everyone can be part of.”
Elphicke is the second Conservative MP to cross the floor in the past two weeks. On 27 April, Dan Poulter, a former health minister, defected from the Conservatives to Labour and blasted the government’s record on the NHS.
In January 2022, during Boris Johnson’s leadership, the MP for Bury South, Christian Wakeford, defected from the Conservatives to Labour.