ANDREW PIERCE: How can Labour now welcome the MP Rachel Reeves

Only last year, Natalie Elphicke delivered a withering assessment of Labour Party policy over the influx of migrants arriving on small boats across the channel, an issue close to her heart as the MP for Dover.

She released a mocked-up picture of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer standing beside a door bearing a ‘Welcome’ sign, which opened on to a beach in her constituency.

‘The facts are clear,’ she said in the accompanying press release. ‘Labour does not want to stop the small boats. This is Labour’s small boat policy. Backing people smugglers over the British people.

‘At every opportunity, Labour has voted against the small boats Rwanda Bill. That’s why the Government’s Stop The Boats Bill is so vital, and why Labour’s attempts to undermine it are so dangerous.’

Natalie Elphicke with husband Charlie arriving at Southwark Crown Court in London where he is on trial accused of three counts of sexually assaulting two women

Yet just over 12 months later, in a display of breathtaking political opportunism, Ms Elphicke, 53, has jumped ship to Labour – an organisation she has spent the last five years savaging at every opportunity – in the knowledge that it has committed itself to repealing the Rwanda legislation even if it is working as a deterrent.

In truth, many Tory MPs were glad to see the back of Ms Elphicke. And veteran Tory MP Steve Baker is not alone in being astonished that Labour would even want her to join their ranks.

He said: ‘I have been searching in vain for a Conservative MP who thinks themselves to the right of Natalie Elphicke. One quipped to me, “I didn’t realise that there was any room to her right”.’

Ms Elphicke’s parliamentary career has been shrouded in controversy ever since the day she was first named as the Tory candidate for Dover just a month before the general election of December 2019.

Her appointment was highly unusual because she took over the seat from her husband Charlie, who had been forced to step down after being charged with three counts of sexual assault against two women. When Charlie was initially suspended by the Tories in 2017, his wife stood by him, claiming the move was ‘a threat to British values’ and an ‘injustice’. She went on to attend every day of her husband’s subsequent trial.

But, as time went by, she engaged in a bewildering series of flip-flops.

When Charlie was sentenced to two years in jail in September 2020 after being found guilty on all three counts, she announced their 25-year marriage – which had produced a son and a daughter – was over. Hardly surprising given the damning comments from the judge as she sentenced him.

Sir Keir Starmer with former Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke in his parliamentary office in the House of Commons

‘This was a campaign of harassment,’ said Mrs Justice Whipple. ‘You’re a sexual predator who used your success and respectability as a cover and told a pack of lies.’

And so when Ms Elphicke bafflingly performed an abrupt U-turn and cruelly and publicly tormented her husband’s victims, even loyal supporters in her Dover constituency association were aghast.

Despite the judge’s brutal verdict, she claimed that he had been punished for being ‘attractive and attracted’ to women and that had made him ‘an easy target for dirty politics and false allegations’.

She even tried and failed to have his conviction overturned, a bid that resulted in her being forced to apologise to the House for improperly trying to influence the judge over her husband’s trial by writing to senior judges on Commons stationery – and a one-day suspension from Parliament.

Back then David Lammy, now shadow foreign secretary, led the criticism saying: ‘This is a total disgrace. Tory MPs seeking to influence judges to protect one of their own. The Conservatives really do think it is one rule for them and another for everyone else.’

Ms Elphicke’s post on X which reads: ‘Labour are backing people smugglers over the British people’

By 2021, she had clearly had another rethink, however, and filed for divorce. She has never been far from controversy ever since. To the horror of Labour MPs and many Tories, in June 2020 she voted in favour of making abortion a criminal offence in Northern Ireland.

A month later, she embarrassed the Tories even further when she criticised the Manchester United and England footballer Marcus Rashford after he missed a crucial penalty in the Euro 2020 final.

She sent a private message to Tory MPs suggesting Rashford should stick to his day job rather than calling on the Government to act over free school meals and campaigning against child food poverty.

Ms Elphicke was accused of rank hypocrisy after it emerged she had a second job as chairman of a housing board.

Her comments also drew a furious response from the Labour high command. Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy, called Ms Elphicke ‘disgusting’ and ‘as low as it gets’ while Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said bluntly that Ms Elphicke should ‘f*** off’.

Labour MPs were speculating yesterday how Rayner and Reeves will respond if Ms Elphicke attends the weekly meeting of the parliamentary Labour Party. The Labour Left was equally appalled.

But it is her remarks on illegal migration that have caused most concern.

Last year, she told Parliament that migrants arriving after crossing the channel had used razor blades to ‘damage and destroy their own fingerprints to avoid identification’.

She also criticised the ‘hand-wringing human rights industry’ and skewed reporting of illegal migration from the ‘Left-wing media and the BBC’. She even derided Sir Keir, the man who is now her party leader, as ‘Sir Softie’.

One senior Labour source says there is huge unease about Ms Elphicke being welcomed by Starmer.

They said: ‘She’s standing down at the next election, so what’s the point? She’s attention-seeking and has had her 15 minutes of cheap publicity. Ms Reeves spoke for all of us when she delivered that four-letter put down.

‘This is a defection too far, which will return to haunt us.’