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The Labor leader has defended the main opposition party’s decision to welcome Conservative Natalie Elphicke after the Dover MP defected on Wednesday with a salvo against Rishi Sunak’s “tired and chaotic government”.
Elphicke’s shocking decision to walk out of the House of Commons just before Prime Minister’s Questions has sparked anger and confusion within Sir Keir Starmer’s party.
Labor MPs have raised concerns about her right-wing politics, past criticism of the party and the defense of her ex-husband Charlie Elphicke following his sexual assault conviction.
But Labor leader Anneliese Dodds said on Thursday that Elphicke, who will stand down at the next general election, was a good fit for Labor and that “people can change their minds”.
She told the BBC that the former Tory MP “made the same decision as so many other former Conservative supporters across the country”.
Elphicke “realized that in order to put her voters and her country first, she cannot continue to support a party that…” . . “It is divided and, in their view, incompetent and unable to deliver on issues such as migration, security and housing,” Dodds said.
Asked about Elphicke’s defense of her disgraced ex-husband and her one-day suspension from the House of Commons after an “inadmissible” attempt to influence a judge hearing his trial, Dodds said Labor’s newest MP was already “accountable.” and faced a “parliamentary procedure”.
Dodds told Times Radio: “I think she has raised this in Parliament and in public and rightly so because it is a very serious issue.”
Elphicke’s previous defense of her ex-husband after his conviction, including her claims that he was “attractive” to women and an “easy target for dirty politics and false accusations”, has alarmed female Labor MPs.
Dodds was asked on Thursday about a number of other previous interventions by Elphicke. Asked about outgoing MP’s criticism of footballer Marcus Rashford over his campaign against child poverty, Dodds said she had “rightly apologized for these unacceptable comments”.
Elphicke’s surprise departure follows that of his Tory colleague Dan Poulter, who decided to switch to Labor last month. The MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, a doctor, said he was standing down because he could not “in good conscience look” NHS colleagues and patients in the eye and called for an early general election.
Although Starmer’s judgment on the move is under scrutiny, a YouGov poll on Thursday showed Labor with its biggest lead over the Tories since Liz Truss was in Downing Street.
According to the poll, Labor was at 48 percent and the Conservatives at 18 percent, while Reform UK was at 13 percent.
This came as short-lived former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi announced he would stand down from Parliament at the election, becoming the 64th Tory MP to do so.
In contrast, 18 Labor MPs, nine Scottish National Party MPs, eight independents, two Sinn Féin MPs, one Green MP and one Plaid Cymru MP have said they plan to resign from the House of Commons at the election, the think tank said Institute for Government.
Zahawi, the Conservative MP for Stratford-on-Avon since 2010, has held various leadership positions.
He was sacked from his last post as Conservative leader in January 2023 after he was found to have committed “serious breaches” of the ministerial code by failing to be transparent about his tax affairs.
He was appointed chancellor for two months in the final days of Boris Johnson’s government following the resignation of Rishi Sunak. He was also previously education minister and vaccination minister during the pandemic.
In a statement to which is best known as the birthplace of William Shakespeare.
Quoting the Bard, Zahawi said: “Parting is such a sweet sadness”, but promised that Sunak and the Tory Party would continue to have his “unwavering support” at the next election and beyond.
Zahawi, an Iraqi refugee, came to Britain as a child unable to speak English. He then founded YouGov.