A BBC Question Time viewer was scathing in his assessment of former Tory MP Natalie Elphicke’s defection to Labour.
The elderly gentleman in Stoke-on-Trent told Fiona Bruce and the panel that he thought her crossing the floor was a “betrayal of the constituents who voted for her as a Conservative MP”.
Drawing a sporting analogy, he added: “I like football, if I go to a football match and watch the players in blue, and halfway through when they’re losing they put a red shirt on and play for the opposition, I’d be very angry as a fan. And the voters should be very angry too.”
The MP for Dover sat behind Sir Keir Starmer on the Labour benches prior to the start of Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesday.
The Hertfordshire-born MP, who had garnered a reputation for being tough on immigration, and indeed on Labour’s plan for reducing it, drew raised eyebrows from both sides of the House when she swapped parties.
Tom Tugendhat said Mr Starmer’s acceptance of Ms Elphicke as a Labour MP is “remarkable” when the party has “no room” for Jeremy Corbyn or Diane Abbott.
The security minister told Sky News’s Politics Hub: “He’s got a party that has Zarah Sultana on one side and Natalie Elphicke on the other but has no room for the guy he wanted to put into Number 10 only a few years ago, Jeremy Corbyn, or Diane Abbott, who’s been campaigning for the Labour movement for what is it, 20 or 30 years? It’s a remarkable thing.”
Asked whether he thought political parties win from the centre ground, Mr Tugendhat said: “Yes I do, which is why I’ve always been a strong advocate of centrist policies… but it’s not just from the centre ground: you’ve got to actually have values and things that people understand.
“And I like Keir, he’s a decent guy, but I have no idea what he stands for.”
Penny Mordaunt joked she is “too left wing” for Labour, as she insisted Tory hopes of retaining Dover were “slightly improved” by Ms Elphicke’s defection.
The Commons Leader said it was a “personal tragedy” for Ms Elphicke to switch from the Government benches to Labour just moments before Prime Minister’s Questions, although she claimed it also exposed a “pattern of behaviour” from Sir Keir Starmer.
She compared the Labour leader to a crab that selects “sedentary creatures and seaweed” to help “disguise its true form”, as she accused him of running “Operation Radish” in a bid to appear “red on the outside” to voters.
