Dan Poulter MP Quits The Tories And Joins Labour

Dan Poulter MP has quit the Conservatives and joined the Labour Party, accusing the Tories of becoming "a nationalist party of the right".

Poulter, a former health minister who has been the MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich since 2010, on Saturday told The Observer he had decided to join Keir Starmer's party because the Tories had become less compassionate and stopped prioritising the NHS.

Poulter has become the latest Conservative figure to switch to Labour after Christian Wakeford, the MP for Bury South, crossed the floor in 2022.

Richard Walker, the boss of supermarket Iceland, announced earlier this year he had stopped donating to the Conservatives to throw his weight behind Labour. In February, PoliticsHome revealed that former Tory minister Nick Boles had started advising shadow ministers on preparing for government.

Poulter's defection represents a severe blow to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's bid to build momentum ahead of next week's highly-anticipated local and mayoral elections.

He told the newspaper that the health service was the key reason for his defection, accusing his former party of abandoning its commitment to the NHS when David Cameron, now the foreign secretary, ceased to be Tory prime minister eight years ago.

"I have to be able to look my NHS colleagues in the eye, my patients in the eye and my constituents in the eye. And I know that the Conservative government has been failing on the thing I care about most, which is the NHS and its patients," he said.

“The Conservative party’s values have changed over the past eight years...

"The values of the Conservative party under David Cameron were different values and the priorities were very different. David Cameron undoubtedly had a very strong commitment