An anti-Brexit Tory MP and former health minister in the globalist David Cameron government has announced he will be defecting to the left-wing Labour Party, accusing the neo-liberal Conservatives of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of becoming a “nationalist party of the right” and of abandoning the socialised healthcare system as a top priority.
Dr Dan Poulter, who has represented Central Suffolk and North Ipswich in the House of Commons since 2010 while still serving as a part-time mental health doctor for the National Health Service (NHS), said that the Conservative Party no longer aligned with his values.
“It feels to me that the Tory party has gone from being a pragmatic, centrist, centre-right party which focused on and understood the importance of public service and the state to deliver certain things… and had a compassionate outlook on key issues. It has gone from that and feels like it has become a nationalist party of the right, much more of what we see in Europe,” Poulter told the left-wing Observer.
The anti-Brexit former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Health under ex-PM David Cameron said that the party has moved away from the direction of Cameron, despite the former PM now serving as Sunak’s foreign secretary.
“The Conservative party’s values have changed over the past eight years,” he said. “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 to the NHS.
“Since he ceased to be prime minister eight years ago, the health service has ceased to be an area of priority for the Conservative party, and that is now showing in the strain on the frontline and the deterioration of care for patients.”
Poulter said that it was primarily his experience working at the NHS which cemented his decision to defect to the left-wing Labour Party, saying: “I could not go on as part of that. 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.”
Although he told the paper that he is not planning to seek re-election at the next general election — which is expected later this year — Poulter said he plans on helping the Labour Party craft an agenda to help the struggling socialised healthcare system death with mental health patients.
While Poulter’s defection to Labour is the first since Christian Wakeford jumped ship to the left-wing party in 2022, it is the second major defection from the Tories in as many months, with Ashfield MP Lee Anderson defecting to the Nigel Farage-founded Reform UK party in March.
It comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak continues to struggle to convince the public of the value of his government, which has doubled down on globalist policies such as the net-zero green agenda, imposed nanny state-style smoking restrictions, enacted decades-high level taxes, and allowed in record numbers of migrants.
According to the latest survey from YouGov, Sunak’s Conservatives are trailing Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party by more than 20 percentage points, with the Tories only having the support of 20 per cent of the country, compared to 45 per cent for Labour and 13 per cent for the populist Reform UK party.