Tory 'No Confidence'-Voting MP Christian Wakeford Defects to Labour Party

The defection comes as Boris Johnson's Tory government continues to reel from the backlash sparked by 'Partygate' - the series of revelations that senior members of the government repeatedly held drinks-filled felicitations in 2020 as the rest of the country was subjected to heavy-handed Covid lockdowns.

Christian Wakeford, the Conservative member of parliament for Bury South who has declared 'no confidence' in Prime Minister Johnson's government, officially defected and joined the opposition Labour on Wednesday.

"Dear Prime Minister, I am writing to inform you of my decision to resign from the Conservative Party and apply to join the Labour Party. From today I will be sitting as the Labour MP for Bury South because I have reached the conclusion that the best interests of my constituents are served by the programme put forward by Keir Starmer and his party," Wakeford wrote in a public address to Johnson.

The politician accused the Conservative government of undertaking policies that "are doing nothing to help the people" of his constituency, and that "indeed are only making the struggles they face on a daily basis worse".

"Britain needs a government focused on tackling the cost of living crisis and providing a path out of the pandemic that protects living standards and defends the security of all. It needs a government that upholds the highest standards of integrity and probity in public life and sadly both you and the Conservative Party as a whole have shown themselves incapable of offering the leadership and government this country deserves," Wakeford added, referring to Partygate.

The backbench MP indicated that his decision to defect followed "many months" of wrestling with his conscious, and said he had made his "policy misgivings clear" to the government "on many occasions in private and sometimes in public".

Wakeford went on to praise Labour's Starmer as a man of "integrity," "not least [in addressing] the vital challenge of combating antisemitism," - a possible reference to the centrist Starmer's coup against democratic socialist Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in 2020 on the back of trumped up claims of rampant antisemitism in the party.

Leaving a Sinking Ship

Wakeford's defection comes at a convenient time for the politician, with a recent YouGov poll showing that 38 percent of Britons would vote Labour if an election were held tomorrow, compared to 28 percent for the Tories. Labour's lead is the biggest since late 2013, and the Conservatives are facing their lowest poll numbers since the tumult which followed the European elections in 2019.

The Bury MP added his name to the list of lawmakers calling on Boris Johnson to resign earlier in the day.