Defector unites Tories to help PM survive the week

Defections are the hard currency of politics. Alan Howarth in 1995 was the harbinger of the Labour landslide.

- JOHN RENTOUL

Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless in 2014 were the vanguard of the Leave vote in the referendum. The eight Labour and three Conservatives who set up Change UK in 2019 (and who mostly ended up in the Liberal Democrats) advertised the realignment of politics in the Brexit election at the end of that year.

Now the tide is flowing from the Conservatives to Labour again, although Christian Wakeford’s defection is more to do with repulsion from Boris Johnson than attraction to Keir Starmer. It is a huge coup for Starmer, and it seemed to make sense that it should be announced just before Prime Minister’s Questions, in an attempt to destabilise Johnson further. But it had the opposite effect, dividing the Commons on party lines rather than along the fault lines within the governing party.

Johnson was energised, transformed from the penitent masked figure of yesterday’s TV clip. He brushed aside the defection, claiming the Tories had won the seat for “the first time in generations” under his leadership. “We will win again in Bury South.” It was actually a Conservative seat until 1997.

But it was Starmer’s day. Noticeably more relaxed and confident, he had a telling line: “The Labour Party has changed and so has the Conservative Party.” In other words, he now claims to be the party that best represents those northern, working-class Leave seats. He could say it with conviction, with Wakeford in a Union Jack mask sitting right behind him.