It seems some Tories have found a new way to snatch power from the ashes of defeat. Is defecting to Labour the new Tory plan for victory?

Former Tory Dan Poulter seems to think so. He has crossed the floor with a dramatic fanfare designed to tell as many people as possible that he is now with the party he expects to win this year’s general election.

In every other way, he is an utter nonentity. Despite having been elected in 2010, This Site didn’t even have an image of him. The one I found [see the featured image] makes it seem he’d rather suck a lemon than represent the people.

Here’s Robert Peston, announcing Poulter’s change of colour on X:

What a lot of word salad: ““It feels to me that the Tory party has gone from being a pragmatic, centrist, centre-right party which focused on and understood the importance of public service and the state to deliver certain things …and had a compassionate outlook on key issues. It has gone from that and feels like it has become a nationalist party of the right, much more of what we see in Europe.”

He gives himself away; he thinks Labour is now a “centrist” or “centre-right” party – correctly. That is his reason for joining. But Labour’s traditional supporters signed up to support left-wing policies.

If Keir Starmer had any sense at all, he would have refused Poulter’s request to join. Starmer already thinks the Labour brand will win the election by a landslide because of its former left-wing positioning and the fact that most people won’t know any better; he doesn’t need this toxic proof that Labour is the new Tory Party.

Confusingly, Poulter has also announced he won’t seek re-election. Why defect, then? Is he the vanguard of a backbench Tory exodus, leading the way to the Promised Land of Starmer’s Labour?

Is defecting to Labour the new Tory plan for victory? If so, it is based on reasons that should send Labour’s traditional voter base running for the Green Party, the Workers’ Party or Independent candidates.

Poulter’s comments on “the importance of public service and the state to deliver certain things” are meaningless without clarification of what things he thinks the state should deliver. David Cameron once said he thought the only public services that should be provided by the government were the justice system and the armed forces, remember.

This defection comes across as a cynical bid to hold on to a Parliamentary seat by a political nobody. He’s hoping that people will vote him back in tribally because he’s now under the Labour brand. Let’s hope the people of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich prove him wrong.

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