Chris Mason: Natalie Elphicke’s defection to Labor was something almost no one saw coming

It all happened very quickly and almost no one at Westminster predicted what would happen.

I’m told Rishi Sunak only discovered Natalie Elphicke’s defection moments before Prime Minister’s Questions.

Some senior Conservatives, when they heard she was leaving, assumed she was joining Reform UK.

Natalie Elphicke’s very discreet talks with the Labor Party had been going on for a few weeks.

One important connection she had on the Labor benches – going back a decade and a half – was with John Healey.

Healey, who accompanied her to Parliament when she took her place on the Labor frontbench, was housing minister when the Labor Party was last in government.

Ms Elphicke has had a professional interest in housing policy for years, long before she became an MP – and emphasized that interest in the statement she released accompanying her defection.

She was awarded an OBE for her housing work in 2015.

Conservative MPs are perplexed by all this.

A party figure said recent campaign leaflets sent out in his name – and considered by voters in Dover to be brilliant and expensive – were all about the Conservative approach to illegal immigration and his view that Labor policy on this issue is pointless. .

“Escalado” and “poisonous” are two other words I scribbled in my senior conservator notebook.

Among Labor MPs, the language is equally colorful.

Some struggle with their political positions.

But for others, it was the comments she made to The Sun following her ex-husband’s conviction for sexual assault that left them angry and upset.

The newspaper reported that she said Charlie Elphicke – the former Conservative MP for what is now her seat – was “attractive” and “attracted to women” and this made him an “easy target”.

She did not comment on these remarks.

Labor said “all of these issues have been dealt with previously, both in Parliament and in public”.

But one senior figure suggested to me that her new MP would find a time to address Labor MPs with concerns about what she had said.

It seems likely that she will need to do so, given the depth of anger among some of her new colleagues.

Privately, Labor and Conservative figures point out that although Diane Abbott remains outside the Parliamentary Labor Party, Natalie Elphicke is now part of it.

But others on the Labor bench say this is ultimately about the bigger picture.

Attracting another Conservative MP to join them, just 10 days after the last one, says everything, they hope, about their momentum and the Conservatives’ lack thereof.

But his arrival proved much less straightforward for many in his new party.