Natalie Elphicke is a far-right conservative. His defection sums up Labour's contempt for progressive voters | Owen Jones

Siri, show me a hollow victory.

It's easy to imagine the joy Keir Starmers' advisers felt when MP Natalie Elphicke told them she was considering leaving the Conservatives to join the Labor Party. After all, no one can accuse Dovers' parliamentary representative of being a conservative Tory. If she's never been off your radar before and you're trying to place her politically, the more well-known Jacob Rees-Mogg or Priti Patel wouldn't be unfair comparisons. If Elphicke Elphike! wants a place in the Labor tent, so no one can accuse Starmer of having a secret left-wing agenda!

Yes, conventional wisdom would have it that a political party that welcomes the defections of its main rival has a strong hand. This shows that the game is really open to its opponents. This should actually be seen as a weakness in a democracy, where the difference between the two main political parties has become so narrow that its representatives can slip between the two. But even if you don't agree with that, Elphickes' defection is in a completely different category. She is a far-right conservative MP who cut her teeth on alarming refugees and migrants.

When will the left admit it is not a refugee crisis but simply illegal immigration, headlined the Mail on Sunday. article she wrote in 2022. Don't trust Labor on immigration, they really want open borders, warns Natalie Elphicke, in an article she wrote for the Daily Express only last year. No serious person should believe that she has changed her mind: she simply no longer believes that Labor disputes this venom.

When she was heckled by union members at a local protest in support of fired P&O employees, and for failing to vote against firing and rehiring rules, she denounced militant unionism. She has generally voted against fewer barriers to access to abortion. She was a member of the far-right Spartan European Research Group. She hit out at English football icon Marcus Rashford over his campaign against child poverty, suggesting he stick to football, despite having a second job herself. At the end of 2021, her local Labor Party, which she has now joined, demanded: Is Ms Elpicke Kent the worst MP?

Elphicke was also suspended for one day from Parliament for trying to influence a judge presiding over the trial of her estranged husband, who was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault. After his conviction, she claimed he was simply punished for being attractive and attracted to women. Remember this the next time you hear Starmer trying to claim the mantle of integrity.

Elphicke would not seek re-election as a Labor MP, but let's be clear about what today's gesture means. Someone as right-wing as Elphicke would not defect to Labor if she seriously believed the party was committed to meaningful, progressive change. In her farewell statement, she praised Boris Johnson's Conservative Party for occupying center ground, suggesting that is where Starmer has moved. Elphicke, in other words, believes that Starmer is the true heir to Johnson's role.

What do you say at this point? It has long been clear that Starmer ran the most dishonest campaign for the leadership of a major political party in British history: he went from promising a nationalization program, to tax rises for the rich , the abolition of tuition fees and the praise of free movement, to welcome a A die-hard Conservative MP in the fold. Thanks to the state of the Conservative Party, Starmer was already on course to win the general election by a wide margin: none of this is necessary for him to move into Number 10.

Indeed, Elphickes' defection could be another harbinger of why everything is going to fall apart for a Starmer prime ministership. Starmerism is a political project devoid of principle, even of soul. Many who have worked closely with him have observed how unpolitical he seems. He compensated for this by surrounding himself with what Labor MP and former Tony Blair adviser Jon Cruddas described as the most right-wing and illiberal faction of the party. The destruction of its $28 billion-a-year green investment fund and the watering down of the last remaining set of workers' rights policies only go in one direction: a new government that will have no response to the multiple crises affecting British society. Without a political core, a Prime Minister Starmer will be shaken by events. Voters who rightly expect change after the Conservatives leave will soon be asking: where is it?

In recent local elections, Green and left-wing independent candidates surged forward, capitalizing on discontent with Starmerism. This was even before Starmer became Prime Minister and had the opportunity to alienate the ruling voters and this in the context of a country which, understandably, desperately wants the Tories out. What Elphicke's defection tells us is that Labor is now a political party that disregards the views of millions of progressive British voters.