No principles, policies or passion… Natalie Elphicke and Keir Starmer’s Labour were made for each other
BY defecting to the Labour Party, Natalie Elphicke – the Tory MP who gives right-wing fruitcakes a bad name – finally reveals what abides in the soul of Keir Starmer’s party. Bugger all.
If Labour will have Natalie, they will have anyone.
What next? Vladimir Putin joins the Greens?
Starmer is dead right — Labour has changed.
Jeremy Corbyn’s Hamas-friendly hard-Left vision has been replaced by a hollow, belief-free void.
Elphicke joined Starmer’s Labour on Wednesday, even though she was spitting poison at the man she calls “Sir Softie” as recently as, oh, late Tuesday.
A year ago, this MP for Dover, the long-suffering constituency that bears the brunt of illegal small boats crossing the English Channel, stood on the beach before a mock-up of Starmer and a door marked “Welcome”.
“The facts are clear,” Natalie thundered.
“Labour does not want to stop the small boats.”
Yet this week, a beaming Elphicke, dressed like she hails from the paramilitary wing of British Airways flight attendants, warmly grasp-ed Sir Softie’s paw, while he fiercely gripped her shoulder as if at any moment she might run off and join the Monster Raving Loony Party.
With their rictus grins and the Union Jack that Starmer has to have in every shot, can’t they see how totally desperate they look?
All the red, white and blue bunting that Keir surrounds himself with can’t hide the emptiness of the post-Corbyn Labour Party.
Labour’s big selling point is — we are not the wicked, baby-eating Tories.
Perhaps that is enough to win the General Election.
Slagging off
But our country deserves better than a Labour Government that believes in nothing more than attaining power.
And deserves better than an opportunistic mediocrity like Natalie, who is an embarrassment to her constituency, her party and her country. And has been for some time.
Elphicke was one of the trolls slagging off England’s Marcus Rashford when he missed a penalty in the Euros final, sneering that the footballer should practise his spot kicks rather than campaigning against child poverty.
She voted to make abortion a criminal offence in Northern Ireland.
And she has railed about the “hand-wringing human rights industry” and derided Keir Starmer as “weak”, unpatriotic” and “disgraceful”.
And now she treats Sir Softie as the saviour of our nation.
Elphicke’s husband Charlie was the Tory MP for Dover until he was suspended and later jailed for three counts of sexual assault.
Natalie divorced him and got custody of the constituency.
But the real victims are the men and women of Natalie Elphicke’s Dover constituency
Tony Parsons
The Tories are blushing that they once had a talent-free fruitcake like Natalie Elphicke on their benches.
Labour are embarrassed that they have her now.
But the real victims are the men and women of Natalie Elphicke’s Dover constituency.
These long-suffering folk voted for a tough-talking, patriotic MP who had sworn to protect them from the illegal migrants that arrive dripping wet virtually in their front gardens every day of the year.
Now they are represented by a Labour Party hack who will keep the Welcome door wide open and ditch using Rwanda as a deterrent — even if it works!
No policies, no principles and no passion.
Natalie Elphicke and Starmer’s Labour were made for each other.
I FAR preferred the Eurovision song contest when it was a naff joke stuffed with unlistenable Euro crud that nobody who loved music took even remotely seriously.
These days Eurovision is taken desperately seriously.
Even Greta Thunberg is on the streets of Malmo, shaking her tiny fist in protest against Israel’s military operation in Gaza.
It’s just crappy European pop music, kids!
I wonder what Terry Wogan would have made of it all.
EMILY BLUNT, on the promotional trail to sell her new movie The Fall Guy, co-starring Ryan Gosling, reveals that she wanted to be sick after snogging some of her previous co-stars.
I felt the same after watching The Fall Guy. What a mess.
Rotten Tomatoes, the trusted measure of film and TV quality, reckons The Fall Guy is shaping up to be the biggest flop of 2024.
It didn’t quite make me feel like throwing up.
But it had me feeling a bit queasy.
Liam, maybe
I AM not too sure about Liam Gallagher’s latest disguise.
Girding his rock and roll loins for his 12-date Definitely Maybe tour next month – can it really be 30 years since that great Oasis debut album? – Liam has been spotted in the Cotswolds, roaming those rolling lush green fields sporting a black hoodie, enormous goggles and a black balaclava.
But surely if you see someone coming towards you in the Cotswolds – home of the rich, famous and fabulously posh – wearing a black hoodie, enormous goggles and a black balaclava, you will know instantly it is almost certainly someone who once sang lead vocals for Oasis.
It’s not going to be Samantha Cameron, is it?
Harry snub’s right
THE King and his youngest son were less than three miles apart this week. But it felt like light years.
Charles could not find the space in his diary to meet Harry.
Who can blame him?
Harry can’t be trusted. From Oprah to Spare, and in every sycophantic interview in between, Harry has displayed a wanton disregard for the privacy of his family.
How can they ever have a private conversation with him and not suspect that the contents will turn up in People magazine or a Netflix documentary or a tell-all book?
As the King and Kate fight cancer, I bet the last person in the world they want to have a heart-to-heart with is that inveterate blabbermouth Mr Markle.
The most remarkable thing about Harry’s visit this week is that the possibility of meeting his big brother William was never even mentioned.
Home truth at last
BREAKING news from the Department of the Bloody Obvious – the main reason for our housing crisis is unprecedented levels of immigration.
A report by Tory MPs Robert Jenrick and Neil O’Brien argues that to cope with demand, nearly 3.5millon new homes needed to be built over the last ten years.
But only a little over two million were built, leaving a deficit of 1.3million.
“To think we can add people at the current rates and solve the housing crisis is absolute magical thinking,” they say.
Labour struggle to admit that unprecedented levels of immigration place unsustainable strains on housing.
And the Tories struggle to admit that we need immigrants in every corner of our society, from NHS nurses to bricklayers, for jobs the locals can’t or won’t do.
But everyone who arrives here needs a home.
And until we can say that out loud without fear of being denounced as a racist, our housing crisis can only get worse.
Chic Anya’s cover star
HAVE we reached peak sideboob?
The fashion choices on the red carpet of the glitzy Met Gala in New York suggest there is not much left to be revealed by the stars of stage, screen and social media.
On the red carpet outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Emily Ratajkowski wore a number by Versace that was more net curtain than anything resembling a frock.
Rita Ora sported a beaded number that proudly displayed side-everything.
And J-Lo’s bottom glittered in the moonlight, her modesty covered by only a few embroidered flowers.
What’s left? Outfits can hardly get much skimpier.
Perhaps soon these attention-seeking, headline-hungry stars will be wearing nothing.
Oh hang on – they already are.
Doja Cat wore only a black thong and a crumpled bed sheet when she went on a shopping spree in Cartier in New York.
It looked silly. It looked crass. It looked unsexy.
It looked designed to scream me-me-me and grab some attention.
And it worked!
Meanwhile Anya Taylor-Joy wore a sculpted metal mini dress when promoting her Mad Max film Furiosa – a dress that covered everything.
And Anya looked sensational.
A poor show
SHERIDAN SMITH’s West End show Opening Night closed two months early after flopping with critics and the paying public.
The show’s creator, Rufus Wainwright, blamed it all on Brexit.
“I do feel that since Brexit, England has entered into a darker corridor where it is a little more narrow in its outlook,” he said.
I did not see Sheridan’s show. But I did see another West End show just down the road this week – Sarah Snook, star of Succession, in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Snook is incredible. For two hours she plays all the parts in one of the most ground-breaking pieces of theatre I have ever seen in my life.
Suggesting that the Sheridan Smith show did not close because of Brexit.
But because it sucked.