The standard political wisdom of the strange case of Natalie Elphicke, Labour MP for Dover, is that a party should accept all-comers if by so doing they discomfit their opponents. Why turn away the perfect image of the MP for Small Boats declaring, with the demonstrative act of crossing the floor of the House of Commons to sit on the Labour benches, that the government is failing on the single issue on which it would like to fight the general election? Which political strategist in their right mind would turn away such a moment of political theatre, dramatizing, as it does, the sense of decay in the government as people, up to and including Conservative MPs, flock to the Labour party? I see how and why one might draw this conclusion and yet I don’t. I understand yet I do not agree. Natalie Elphicke is too much and the Labour party ought to have had the confidence to turn her down.
One should begin by pointing out that it doesn’t matter a great deal. The day after the Elphicke defection, Labour led the Tories by 30 points in a YouGov poll. (I like to think that this was what prompted YouGov’s founder, Nadhim Zahawi, to announce that he will stand down as Tory MP for Stratford). Even if the Elphicke move backfires – and the constituency Labour parties in the region seem less than thrilled about it – there isn’t much of a political threat. She might not add much to the party but it is hard to see much subtraction, either. That isn’t the point. My unease at the move is not based on whether or not it will be consequential or successful in raw political terms. It’s that political parties need to have boundaries and Natalie Elphicke shouldn’t, on any account of what she thinks about the world, be a Labour MP.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Look, Stranger! to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.