The controversies of Natalie Elphicke, the MP who has defected to Labour

Natalie Elphicke, who has become Labour’s newest MP after her shock defection from the Conservatives, has a track record that places her firmly on the right of British politics.

A lawyer who specialised in housing policy, she succeeded her now former husband – the disgraced former Tory Charlie Elphicke – as the MP for Dover. He was convicted and jailed for sexual assault in 2020.

Even the manner in which she ended up with his seat has come into question. After she announced weeks before the 2019 election that she had been “unanimously” selected to fight the seat, it was later revealed that the local Conservative association had put Elphicke forward as the only candidate.

However, her comments, ranging in topic from immigration to the Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford’s involvement in anti-poverty campaigns, have earned her the opprobrium of those who will now be her allies on the opposition benches.

Suspension from the House of Commons

Elphicke was one of several Conservative MPs who were temporarily suspended from the Commons and told to apologise after being found to have tried to influence a judge presiding over the trial of her ex-husband, Charlie Elphicke, who was jailed for two years in September 2020.

Using official Commons stationery, the MPs had written to senior judges in November 2020, before a hearing on the release, of pre-sentencing character references for him.

After writing to “express concern” about the hearing, they received a response the following day from the office of the lord chief justice of England and Wales who said the intervention was “improper”. They were later admonished by the Commons standards committee.

Attitude towards survivors’ claims

Elphicke had quickly sprung to her then husband’s defence after the Tories had suspended him following the latest of a number of allegations against him by women.

The manner in which the whip was removed, based on allegations by one of the women, was a threat to British values, she said, going on to liken his situation to that of Carl Sargeant, a Welsh parliament member who took his own life after being told he faced unspecified claims about his behaviour.

Even after Charlie Elphicke’s conviction, and the end of their marriage, she pivoted back to a defence of him as she backed an appeal, writing in the Sun: “Charlie is charming, wealthy, charismatic and successful – attractive, and attracted to, women.

“All things that in today’s climate made him an easy target for dirty politics and false allegations,” she added.

Attack on Marcus Rashford

Elphicke apologised after she was criticised for saying that Rashford should have spent more time “perfecting his game” than “playing politics” after the Manchester United and England footballer missed a crucial penalty in the Euro 2020 final, resulting in him and some of his teammates being subjected to a barrage of online abuse. After the match she sent a private message to colleagues suggesting he stuck to his day job rather than calling on the government to act over free school meals and campaigning against child food poverty.

She wrote: “They lost – would it be ungenerous to say Rashford should have spent more time perfecting his game and less time playing politics.”

The second job

After her attack on Rashford it emerged that Elphicke was getting £36,000 a year from her role as chair of the New Homes Quality Board, in addition to earning £82,000 as an MP.

Her entry in the register of members’ interests said that her role on the board, described as “an industry-led initiative to promote a new code for housebuilding standards together with a structure for an independent New Homes Ombudsman”, took about eight hours a week for which she was paid £3,000 a month.

The Labour deputy leader, Angela Rayner, said at the time that Boris Johnson, then Tory leader, needed to “to decide whether his MPs are MPs representing their constituents or if they are advisers and consultants working for private interests who pay them”.

Migration

As recently as a year ago, Elphicke wrote an opinion piece for the Daily Express that was headlined: “Don’t trust Labour on immigration they really want open borders”, and ended with an attack on Keir Starmer, who she described as “Sir Softie”.

Elphicke had also been one of the Tory backbenchers acting as a thorn in the side of Rishi Sunak as he attempted to get legislation on his Rwanda deportation bill through the Commons. At one point she was among rebels who supported an amendment from the former immigration minister Robert Jenrick.

Elphicke was criticised in August 2020 for her rhetoric in a video message she tweeted after watching eight migrants come ashore in Kent. She stated: “This is unacceptable that people are breaking into Britain in this way.” Andrew Powell, an immigration and family law barrister, condemned what he said was her “appalling and dehumanising language”.

She also came under fire for choosing Christmas Day in 2021 as the moment to call for an end to small boat crossings in the Channel.

Voting record

Elphicke’s positions in the House of Commons have put her starkly on the right, even in comparison to some other Tories.

She has consistently voted for making it easier to remove someone’s British citizenship and has almost always voted for stronger laws and enforcement of immigration rules.

On green issues, she has been at odds with Labour. As recently as February she voted to reject a climate change test for new oil and gas licences. She has also voted in line with Conservative colleagues on attempts to bring air quality targets to be in line with World Health Organization guidelines.

In other votes she has backed more restrictive regulation of trade union activities.