NATALIE ELPHICKE’S political reincarnation as a Labour MP is an event that sheds an unforgiving light on Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
Ms Elphicke, the MP for Dover and Deal, is no “one nation” Tory repelled by the consequences of Conservative policy.
Rather, she has sat on the right-wing edge of the Conservative Party in parliament. She has made her name as an anti-migrant hardliner, until recently attacking Labour for being “too soft” on the issue.
She inherited her Commons seat from her ex-husband Charlie Elphicke after he was charged and then imprisoned for sexual offences. She appeared to blame the victims for her then-husband’s behaviour.
She was then sanctioned by the House of Commons for attempting to put pressure on the judge presiding over Charlie’s case.
She further distinguished herself by abusing England footballer Marcus Rashford over this work to tackle the food poverty for children which has been one deplorable consequence of Tory economic and social policy.
In short, there is nothing whatever to suggest that Labour’s newest MP shares the values of the labour movement, or even of liberal Britain.
Rather, her record is that of a right-wing reprobate — indeed her statement on Wednesday indicated a strong preference for Boris Johnson over Rishi Sunak.
Yet Sir Keir rolled out the red carpet for this right-wing Tory. He welcomed her into a party which expels members for merely “liking” a tweet by a Green politician, or for expressing sympathy with a sick SNP leader.
It is a party which, moreover, has excluded Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black woman MP, from its parliamentary ranks for over a year because of a single ill-judged letter for which she immediately apologised.
A party which offers a home to Elphicke but not to Abbott is, simply, a party which is comfortable with racism.
It is not a party which is serious about tackling the glaring weaknesses in the Labour vote revealed in last week’s local elections.
How will Elphicke assist with Labour’s stated intention of winning back the tens of thousands of voters in the Muslim communities who have abandoned a party they see as not just on the wrong side of history over Gaza but also as acquiescent, to say the least, in Islamophobia?
And what will the Dover MP bring to the effort to convince young people who have voted Green or independent in so many cases to return to Labour? Her presence on the Labour benches sends the strongest possible signal that they are not wanted.
It was perfectly open to Starmer to decline to accept Elphicke’s offer to join Labour. Under those circumstances, perhaps she would have followed former Tory Party deputy chairman Lee Anderson into the Reform Party or sat as an independent.
Of course, her defection is an embarrassment for Sunak and therefore a win in the war of Westminster point-scoring. But with a gargantuan polling lead over the Tories, it is scarcely a win Starmer needs for election victory.
The fact that she wanted to join Labour shows how far the party has turned itself into a repository for right-wing opinion.
And the fact that Labour accepted her suggests that there are no limits to this transformation under its present leadership.
Indeed, a Labour spokesman declined to rule out that an approach from Nigel Farage might be welcomed, far-fetched as that suggestion doubtless is.
It is surely past time that trade union representatives on Labour’s ruling bodies raised a red flag against this process, or even the Red Flag, of equality and socialism, concepts alien to the “Labour” MP for Dover.
