Awkward fit A politician at odds with new friends

Natalie Elphicke, who has become Labour's newest MP, has a record that puts her on the right of UK politics.

- Ben Quinn

A lawyer who specialised in housing policy, she succeeded her former husband - the disgraced former Tory Charlie Elphicke - as the MP for Dover after he was jailed for sexual assault. But even the manner in which she ended up with his seat has come into question. She announced weeks before the 2019 election that she had been "unanimously" selected, but later it was revealed that the local Conservative association had put Elphicke forward as the only candidate. And her comments on topics from migration to Marcus Rashford's involvement in anti-poverty campaigns, have earned the opprobrium of those with whom she will now sit in parliament.

Suspension from the Commons

Elphicke was one of several Tory MPs temporarily suspended from the Commons and told to apologise after they were found to have tried to influence a judge presiding over the trial of Charlie Elphicke, who was jailed for two years in September 2020.

Using official Commons stationery, the MPs had written to senior judges in November 2020 to "express concern" about the hearing. They received a response the following day from the office of the lord chief justice of England and Wales who said the intervention was "improper". They were later admonished by the Commons standards committee.

Attitude towards survivors' claims