Another week, another defection from the Conservative benches to Labour. Penny Mordaunt, who presides over the House of Commons as if auditioning for Game of Thrones, described Natalie Elphicke’s defection to the enemy camp, close on the heels of Dan Poulter, as a “personal tragedy”.

Despite Mordaunt’s love of drama, this is not the stuff of tragedy. Cynics might view it as evidence that, with the Tory ship taking on water and in imminent danger of sinking, its members are seeking to save their own skins. Yet that’s not my take. Call me naïve - and plenty will – but what I see is a politician who can no longer sign up to the party line. Even though she is standing down at the next election, her convictions are so misaligned with those of Rishi Sunak and his cabinet that she feels she has no option but to cross the political divide.

Is she a rat, as Winston Churchill described himself, when he ping-ponged between Conservatives and Liberals and back again? Without a doubt, but that doesn’t mean she, or Poulter, were wrong to change their colours. Following their consciences, they have taken a difficult step, and good luck to them and their constituents.

Natalie Elphicke (Image: free)

If nothing else, this latest loss to the Tory benches is symptomatic of a fact well known within the halls of Westminster and Holyrood – and of any democratic parliament you care to name – that the rhetoric from all sides of the house is, at times, little more than grandstanding.

While onlookers are led to believe that parties are ideologically separated by a chasm as deep as the Grand Canyon, the........

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