Defections from the Labour Party to the right it might be argued have a place in the Party’s history.
In 1931 Ramsay Macdonald and others quit Labour to form a National Government and in practice defected to the Tory Party.
In 1981 the SDP split saw significant numbers of MPs to the right of then Labour policy. In the context of 2024 most would probably be content with Labour.
There have also of course been individual renegades from Reg Prentice to, more recently, John Mann and John Woodcock.
The recent defections of two Tory MPs to Labour, one, Natalie Elphicke known for being a hard right-winger, are historically unusual examples of political traffic the other way.
In context they might be seen both as signals of the crumbling of the Tory Party split over which way to address the continuing crisis of British capitalism, and Labour moving from any form of social democratic party to a kind of centrist-national party. In essence a party that has no fundamental principles but to do the job the Tories can’t- manage the State. Perhaps however the reality is that the job is unmanageable
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