It takes some brass neck to cross the floor, but to do it in the manner of Natalie Elphicke also requires considerable levels of delusion. A year ago, the Dover MP warned Labour were not to be ‘trusted’ on immigration because they ‘really want open borders’. Yet a deciding factor behind her defection, she writes in her parting statement today, was the ‘safety and security’ of those borders – a matter on which Keir Starmer’s party has yet to convince anyone.

Elphicke also lambasts the Tories’ housing policy, although even Angela Rayner would struggle to articulate just what Labour plans to do to alleviate the crisis. She objects to the ousting of Boris Johnson, yet her new colleagues wanted him out on day one and made his life a misery for the last months of his premiership.

The real tragedy is that the ‘centre ground’ has shifted so far to the left under the Conservatives

But perhaps the most puzzling claim made by an MP considered to have been firmly on the right of her former party, was her complaint that the Tories have ‘abandoned’ the centre ground.

It’s possible Elphicke was referring to the decision to reach Net Zero at breakneck speed regardless of the costs, or the........

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