There is a strong view among Conservatives that John came within a whisker of ‘crossing the floor’ and joining Labour when Gordon Brown became PM.Oh dear. So someone who vacillates between the two main parties is not a credible candidate for a post in which he has to be impartial? (The article was published the day before Bercow was elected Speaker.)
People in a better position than me to know what was going on say that John considered defecting at the same time as another Tory, Quentin Davies. John denied it, but I vividly recall his reaction when Quentin took his seat with Labour for the first time.
Dorries, whose sanity is often questioned, really asks for derision here:
His mystifying journey from the far Right to the Left after his marriage to a Labour activist begs the question of stability, as does his lack of almost a single friend on the Tory benches.Less common than the other way around, it is not altogether unknown. Tam Dalyell and Phillip Whitehead are two Labour politicians who made the journey. Not being a paragon of mental health myself might demonstrate Dorries point, if one knew nothing of scientific method. Never as right-wing as Bercow once was, thirty years ago my politics were probably quite similar to Andrew Neil's, I thought then of joining the Young Conservatives only to join the Labour Party a decade later.
Hat tip: Harry's Place
