Tory defector Natalie Elphicke stormed out of the party and joined Labour because she was “bitter” about being denied a ministerial job in charge of housing policy, senior Conservative sources have told the Observer.
It is understood that Elphicke was considered for a government job first by Liz Truss when she became prime minister in 2022 but was not in the end given a post. Elphicke then made clear her ambition to become a minister under Rishi Sunak, but again was unsuccessful.
A cabinet source said Elphicke was enraged at being rejected: “I know she is very bitter about the fact she was not made a minister. She wants to be housing minister and she is bitter about it.”
This weekend, as the Conservative party looked for ways to undermine Elphicke, senior Tories were suggesting her connections with her former husband, Charlie Elphicke, who was convicted of sexual assault against two women in July 2020 and was jailed for two years, led to inevitable concerns about promoting her.
Last week, after she crossed the floor to sit on the opposition benches at prime minister’s questions, Labour MPs were furious that Keir Starmer had agreed to admit a rightwing Tory who had defended her husband, even after his conviction, and who had cast doubt on his victims’ testimonies.
Elphicke then apologised the day after her defection, when MPs including Labour’s Jess Phillips demanded that she do so. “I have previously, and do, condemn his behaviour towards other women and towards me,” Elphicke said. “It was right that he was prosecuted and I’m sorry for the comments that I made about his victims.”
Rumours circulating among Tory MPs and within the government suggesting that Elphicke and her husband were living together again – although they had divorced – have been denied by her. She told Saturday’s Daily Telegraph: “I am not in a relationship with Charlie Elphicke and I am long divorced from him.”
Asked whether the Labour party had known that Elphicke had been refused a job in government and that it might have been as a result of her connections with her husband, a spokesman said it was “not getting into processology”.
Senior Labour figures this weekend said that there were other Tory MPs in “active discussions” with the party about defecting, though nothing was imminent.
Allegations of impropriety against Charlie Elphicke first emerged in 2017. He immediately had the Tory whip withdrawn.
He briefly had the whip restored before a no-confidence vote in then prime minister Theresa May in December 2018, but lost it again after he was charged with sexual assault the following summer.
Shortly before the 2019 election, Natalie Elphicke announced she had “unanimously” won the Tory selection for the Dover and Deal seat her former husband had represented. Not many details of the selection process have emerged.
Charlie Elphicke was convicted of sexual assault against two women in July 2020 and was jailed for two years. At the trial, it was disclosed that he had chased one of the victims down the stairs of his home, stating: “I’m a naughty Tory.”
It was in the wake of that verdict that Natalie Elphicke said she believed the claims against him had been “complete nonsense” and that while she was divorcing her husband, he was “charming, wealthy, charismatic and successful – attractive, and attracted to, women”, making him an “easy target for dirty politics and false allegations”.
In 2021, she was one of several MPs suspended from the Commons and told to apologise for being found to have tried to influence a judge presiding over her former husband’s trial.
Last night, Robert Buckland, the former lord chancellor and justice secretary, said that she also came to see him on the eve of her husband’s trial and lobbied him to interfere in the hearing of the case.
The MP for South Swindon told the Sunday Times: “She was told in no uncertain terms that it would have been completely inappropriate to speak to the judge about the trial at all.”
In response, a Labour party spokesperson said: “Natalie Elphicke totally rejects that characterisation of the meeting. If Robert Buckland had any genuine concerns about the meeting, then he should have raised them at the time, rather than making claims to the newspapers now Natalie has chosen to join the Labour party.”
On Saturday, Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, defended the decision to accept Elphicke. He said defectors must be treated as “converts, not traitors” and urged more to follow suit. A fortnight ago, the Observer revealed that Dr Dan Poulter was defecting to Labour, citing his frustrations at Tory policy on the National Health Service.
Streeting told the Progressive Britain conference: “I’m proud that our party is a broad church. Our wing of the Labour party has always understood that ours is an evangelical cause.
“What Dan Poulter and Natalie Elphicke have done is to make the same leap of faith that we’re asking other Conservative voters to take: to put their faith in us. What better message carrier could we have for those voters than the doctor who has concluded that only Labour can be trusted with the NHS and the MP for Dover who has judged that only Labour has serious solutions to tackling the small boats crisis?
“So as those former Conservatives look to Labour for reassurance, to judge whether we are the party for them, we have to send them a clear message – if you want to turn the page on 14 years of Conservative failure, if you want to get Britain’s future back, then there is a place for you in Keir Starmer’s Labour party. Join us.”