Natalie Elphicke is a risky prop for Starmer, in his efforts to appear safe for Tory voters

There was something odd about that photograph of Sir Keir Starmer in Thursday’s media, a strangeness that took me a moment to pin down. There stood the Labour leader, sober-suited, in his book-lined parliamentary study. To his right was the Union flag. To his left, holding his hand of welcome, was Natalie Elphicke.

Until Wednesday, Mrs Elphicke had been the extremely Right-wing Conservative MP for Dover and Deal. Now she had crossed the floor.

The oddity, I realised, lay in the picture’s aesthetic. It was completely retro.

Mrs Elphicke was dressed in a dark blue twinset with metal buttons. A red, white and blue silk scarf was neatly arranged around her neck. Had I not recognised Sir Keir, I would have dated the photo as 1987 and guessed it showed a junior transport minister in the Thatcher government giving some special privatisation award to the best British Airways air hostess.

(I am speaking of the period when British Airways was proudly British, and before Lady Thatcher, in retirement, famously covered a model of its hideous “ethnic” tail-fins with her handkerchief.)

This nostalgic, true-blue scene must have been what Sir Keir intended. It was meant to show that, however Tory you think you are, you can join what he calls “this changed Labour”.

Perhaps it was a similar appeal, almost exactly a hundred years ago, which attracted a brilliant young MP, formerly a Conservative, called Oswald Mosley, to join the Labour Party. Fighting the years of Tory/ National Liberal economic stagnation, he called, as does Mrs Elphicke today, for dramatic state intervention in housing to benefit the working classes.

Mosley rose fast to become chief secretary to the Treasury, but impulsively resigned because Labour was not implementing the Keynesian policies he sought. He later became famous as leader of the British Union of Fascists and was interned during the war for his Nazi sympathies.

So here is what Sir Keir wants wavering Tory voters to think – two days after Mrs Elphicke joined him in Westminster – on the day he went down to Deal (flanked by Mrs Elphicke and the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper) to announce how Labour will coordinate everything you can think of – police, counter-terrorist activities, Border Force, MI5, the National Crime Agency, “Europe”, and, I dare say, the SAS, the French Foreign Legion, and Putin’s Spetsnaz – to do anything they can think of to stop the small boats, anything except sending their human cargoes to Rwanda.

His message is, “We will be tougher than the Tories on immigrants. You can see that because the Right-wing MP who protects the white cliffs of Dover is with us. The Tories are wasting millions on Rwanda, which won’t work. Only Labour will keep out the unwelcome hordes.”

Obviously, he cannot put it quite like that, but he can present the message visually. Like Nigel Farage, Sir Keir has gone down to Kent to “fight them on the beaches”. Unlike Mr Farage, he is promising that the full panoply of the “deep state” (which is now working hard for a Labour victory) will help him do so.

Sir Keir’s move dovetails with his recent utterances praising Mrs Thatcher. They also remind me of the “pledge” cards that Labour produced before the 1997 election. On one side, there was a picture of the then prime minister, John Major, accompanied by the words “‘…weak…’ Daily Telegraph”.

On the other was the Labour leader, Tony Blair, accompanied by the words “‘…strong…’ Daily Telegraph”. Not subtle, but good at doing Tory heads in.

For this week, therefore, Mrs Elphicke makes a useful multiple photocall. The doubts about welcoming such a person that many Labour MPs are expressing will be ignored. Such objectors can be treated like those churchgoers who express unease about Muslim asylum-seekers who suddenly convert to Christianity as deportation looms. “Where’s your generosity of spirit?”, say the ministers who have just baptised them.

It may, however, be reasonable to ask whether Mrs Elphicke can be absorbed in the longer term.

First, there is a question of due diligence. Nobody seems to know where she stands in relation to her ex-husband. She has defended, then criticised, then re-defended him and then apologised for defending him. It is alleged that, although she divorced him after his conviction for sexual assaults, she still lives with him.

Labour is normally hyper-attentive to any “Me Too”-type incidents and to how those close to the accused behave. Many of its supporters will not let such things drop.

Many, too, are questioning why some existing MPs, such as Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn, are suspended for years while Mrs Elphicke walks unimpeded down Labour’s red carpet (a carpet which, by the way, now bears the Union flag in its top right corner).

It is said that Sir Keir’s tight team only brought the Labour chief whip into discussions of Natalie’s floor-crossing very late in the day. The whips, whose job it is to monitor such problems, are thought to be unhappy.

It is clear from the show in Deal that Sir Keir’s chief of staff, Sue Gray, has used her former Civil Service contacts very effectively to present the new policy of a Border Security Command, though it is essentially the same as the Tories’, minus Rwanda.

She has helped Labour claim that it can muster Whitehall’s administrative might, which has been frustrating Conservative immigration policy, and turn it to advantage. Ms Gray is less well-placed to deal with the Elphicke issue.

Then there is the matter of Mrs Elphicke’s views. It is not only the Left of the party that is worried. Kent’s only pre-existing Labour MP is Rosie Duffield, who was long shunned by Sir Keir because of her publicly-stated belief that biological sex is an immutable fact, whereas gender identity is not.

As MP for Canterbury and thus Mrs Elphicke’s next-door constituency neighbour, Ms Duffield has had dealings with the woman she laughingly describes as “Top Socialist Natalie Elphicke” and is not persuaded by her Damascene conversion. She says many colleagues feel the same, but do not want to speak up.

The cynic will say that Mrs Elphicke’s opinions do not matter because she is not standing again. The cynic may well be right to see her as politically expendable, and all that she will do before leaving public life will be to write a report about housing, which no one will read.

But if it is true, as she herself said as she changed sides, that the Starmer Labour Party “has changed out of all recognition”, there will be significant numbers of Labour voters who, if they cannot recognise their own party, will not vote for it.

Finally, it is worth asking whether the new, Elphicke-endorsed Labour policy will make the slightest difference to controlling illegal migration, let alone (which neither Rishi Sunak nor Sir Keir wishes to discuss) legal migration.

Another figure backing it (see his article in this newspaper) is Neil Basu, the highly political ex-police counter-terrorism head, who is now on hand to praise Sir Keir. In his turn, Sir Keir tweets that Mr Basu “knows what it takes to protect national security”.

Yet Mr Basu is obsessed with police “institutional racism” and has form for supporting the endless Gaza marches, prioritising the threatening politics of protest over the needs of the law-abiding.

He, not Mrs Elphicke, is the better guide to how “this changed Labour” really thinks about this traditionally Tory set of issues.

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