Dan Poulter's defection says a lot about Labour today
Keir Starmer and former Conservative Party MP Dan Poulter Dr Dan Poulter, who dominated the airwaves this weekend as he jumped ship to the Labour Party.
Primarily, it tells us that Keir Starmer’s “changed Labour Party” is a comfortable home for the sort of Cameronite Tory that Poulter is. When Dan Poulter was a Conservative frontbench health minister, a little over a decade ago, sat opposite him as shadow health minister was Diane Abbott MP, serving in the shadow cabinet of Ed Miliband. Abbott was opposing the Health and Social Care Bill, which opened up the NHS to more outsourcing.Abbott apologised and retracted her comments in full – yet nearly a year later, she still languishes in limbo, thanks to Labour’s obscure disciplinary processes.
Poulter is not alone in finding this all a bit distasteful. Other former ministers like David Gauke, Dominic Grieve and Anna Soubry have also left the Conservative Party – withat the next election. Even former Chancellor George Osborne recently described Labour’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, as the “heir to David Cameron”.
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