EVEN in the long and tawdry history of political defections, Natalie Elphicke’s is among the most shameless and ridiculous.
It is hugely damaging too for the already battered reputation of our MPs. Her bizarre overnight conversion to Labour cements the view that too many believe in nothing but their careers.
Elphicke was no woolly Tory centrist. She was a hardliner in the Brexiteer ERG which one of her most senior new Labour colleagues likened to the Nazis.
Her apparent despair that Rishi Sunak dragged his party away from the centre ground is utterly insincere as well as transparently false.
Reform voters are deserting the Tories precisely because he has NOT done so.
But even that hypocrisy is small beer once you factor in the tsunami of bile Elphicke previously unleashed on her new Parliamentary pals and leader Keir Starmer: “Disgraceful”, “weak”, “inexcusable” and “unpatriotic” among others.
The small boats crisis is paramount for Dover’s MP. Labour, she rightly said, had no plan to end it and wanted “open borders”.
Its efforts to sabotage the Rwanda deterrent she unstintingly supported were “dangerous”.
She mocked Starmer as “Sir Softie”.
The idea that, for her, his non-existent migration strategy suddenly now trumps Rwanda is utterly laughable.
We get that Starmer could not resist another defector.
But welcoming Elphicke with such triumphant relish is a mistake which casts doubt on his judgement among his own MPs and voters.
Many are rightly apoplectic at him embracing an unprincipled opportunist who has trashed them for years and whose views change with the weather.
WHEN it comes to the sewage routinely pumped into our rivers and the sea, we know all the causes and excuses.
A soaring population overwhelming an antiquated drainage system. Record rain making emergency discharges more common. Better monitoring. And so on.
But the bottom line is our beaches and rivers are in an appalling, foul and unsafe state. And the water giants responsible are a shambolic disgrace.
So we welcome Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed vowing to make their millionaire bosses personally criminally liable for illegal pollution.
They have got away with grotesque failure for too long. And it stinks.
A FEW may sympathise with Prince Harry.
It cannot be fun to fly back to Britain again and be unable to see your dad.
But shed no tears for him. He made his choices, burned his bridges and betrayed his family repeatedly for cash.
Saying sorry to them, and to Britain, wouldn’t make up for all of it.
But it would be a start.
