So. Farewell then Dan Poulter. The Central Suffolk MP has today switched from the Conservatives to join the Starmer army, firing off a double-barrelled blast at his former party’s handling of the NHS. The Tories, Poulter says, are now little more than a ‘nationalist party’ who have abandoned ‘compassion’ as part of an increasingly ‘rightward drift.’ Ouch.
One place where there is certainly little compassion for Poulter today is in the Tory MPs’ WhatsApp chat where his onetime colleagues are reacting with a mixture of mockery and fury. ‘Didn’t he step down in 2019?’ asked Alex Stafford, labelling Poulter ‘A nobody trying to be a somebody.’ ‘I didn’t even know he was an MP!’ added Sara Britcliffe while Chris Clarkson went for brevity and labelled Poulter ‘An arse.’ ‘The honourable thing is to quietly announce a departure and slip away,’ declared Conor Burns, ‘To do it a week out from elections in a blaze of publicity suggests some grubby little deal.’ A ‘sad and disappointed’ Thérèse Coffey meanwhile offered a prediction as to Poulter’s future plans: ‘I also expect he will be rewarded with a peerage by Labour in due course.’
Others chose to focus on Poulter’s less-than-stellar attendance within parliament. Vicky Ford shared a list of attendance at the Energy Security Select Committee, noting that Poulter had been ‘too busy’ to attend any of its eight meetings between June 2023 and January 2024. ‘He was a very busy man that much is true’ remarked Sarah Dines, with Heather Wheeler noting how ‘He took another £80k on top of his Dr’s salary.’ ‘I think he left when someone finally did a roll call and noticed him missing’, jibed Paul Scully. ‘Think I’ve seen him once in the last five years.’ Such anger is also being reflected in Poulter’s local association, with Suffolk councillor Sam Murray tweeting:
Good riddance. So glad I no longer have to apologise for his failure to turn up in North Ipswich regularly. We work so hard in North Ipswich as a Conservative group and have had to carry him for years and make so many excuses for his regular cancellations.
So much for ‘we wish him well’ eh?
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