A lawmaker in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party defected to the opposition Labour Party on Wednesday, the second to do so in less than two weeks, criticising what she called the broken promises of a “tired and chaotic government”.
Sunak’s Conservatives are trailing Labour by about 20 points in opinion polls ahead of a national election expected this year, and the party suffered heavy losses in local elections last week.
“Under Rishi Sunak, the Conservatives have become a byword for incompetence and division,” defecting lawmaker Natalie Elphicke said in a statement. “The centre ground has been abandoned and key pledges of the 2019 manifesto have been ditched.”
Elphicke is the third Conservative lawmaker to defect to Labour since the last election in 2019. Christian Wakeford switched in 2022 over former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s conduct around rule-breaking parties during COVID-19 lockdowns.
Dan Poulter, a former health minister, defected to Labour last month saying the government’s record on the state-run National Health Service (NHS) – one of Sunak’s five priorities for the country – meant he could no longer represent the Conservatives.
Elphicke, a former finance lawyer, won the south coast seat of Dover at the last election after her husband who represented the area was forced to stand down after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting two women.
She said Sunak’s government had failed to stop the arrival of small boats carrying asylum seekers across the Channel, had failed to build enough homes, and had overseen a rise in homelessness.
“We need to move on from the broken promises of Rishi Sunak’s tired and chaotic government,” she said.
