Defecting Tory MP Christian Wakeford did not mince his words in his letter to Boris Johnson, informing the PM of his decision to switch to the Labour party. ‘You and the Conservative party as a whole have shown themselves incapable of offering the leadership and government this country deserves,’ he wrote.
Wakeford is no stranger to criticising his fellow politicians: he famously called Owen Paterson a ‘c***’ in Parliament. The fledging Labour MP also made a habit of attacking Kier Starmer’s party during his brief spell on the Tory backbenches. Here are six times Wakeford took a pop at Labour:
Wakeford is no stranger to criticising his fellow politicians
‘What we are seeing is a paradigm shift whereby the Labour party no longer represents those working-class communities.’ (20 July 21)
‘The Opposition have used every opportunity throughout the pandemic to play politics, from accusing Kate Bingham of cronyism to describing test and trace as money wasted. Labour and the SNP are more interested in sniping from the sidelines.’ (7 July 21)
‘Radcliffe in my constituency is a proud town with a rich heritage and a strong identity that has unfortunately been forgotten for far too long by the Labour council, but this Conservative Government are delivering for the town.’ (1 July 21)
‘There is the hypocrisy of Labour Members, who almost want to pretend that the past few years have not happened. They are still talking as if Brexit should not have happened and we should still be a member of the single market and the customs union. They lost the argument then and they have lost it ever since.’ (17 Mar 21)
‘What we see from the Labour party and definitely from the Front Bench is a collective amnesia. Let us not forget that, in 2010 and in 2015, Labour, too, was campaigning on a platform of tackling the deficit and delivering its own austerity, so I guess that all cuts are bad unless they are Labour cuts. We have seen the shadow Chancellor today again inadvertently mislead by confusing the deficit with the debt.’ (23 Feb 21)
‘After many years of Labour neglect in the north and our northern towns, the Conservatives have now been able to build our very own blue wall in the north; after those many years of Labour neglect, our northern counterparts from ‘Game of Thrones’ remind us that ‘the north remembers’.’ (22 Jan 20)
Mr S wonders how Wakeford will justify these words to his new Labour colleagues – and the voters of Bury South who elected a Tory MP….
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