Conservative MP Mark Logan defects to Labour in fresh blow to Sunak

Conservative MP Mark Logan said on Thursday he will support Labour at the election, piling pressure on UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is struggling with an exodus of nearly a quarter of his parliamentary party.

In a statement, Logan, who has represented Bolton North East since 2019, said he had left the Tory party and would not seek re-election, adding: “Labour is back.”

He said he had submitted an application to join Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party, which is more than 20 percentage points ahead of the Conservatives in opinion polls.

“We need renewed enthusiasm and optimism in both tone and in policy, and I believe that we are already seeing this through Keir Starmer and his team,” Logan added.

His defection takes the total number of Tory MPs who have announced they are standing down at the July 4 election to 78. And three have defected to Labour over the past month.

The Tories had 345 MPs when parliament was dissolved on Thursday.

Several high-profile Conservative exits from parliament were announced last week, including housing secretary Michael Gove and former cabinet ministers Dame Andrea Leadsom, Sir John Redwood and Greg Clark.

Since late April, Tory MPs Dan Poulter and Natalie Elphicke have defected to Labour, sparking a backlash from the left of the Labour party over who has been allowed to join under Starmer’s leadership.

Starmer has been accused of mounting a “purge” of left-wing figures, including Faiza Shaheen, Labour candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green.

Claims have also been made that he has sought to block veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott from standing as a party candidate at the July 4 election.

Meanwhile, chancellor Jeremy Hunt conceded that his seat of Godalming and Ash in Surrey was on a “knife edge” amid a strong challenge from the Liberal Democrats.

“We have had private polling where we were just ahead and private polling where we were just behind,” he told the Evening Standard. “Genuinely impossible to call.”

The Lib Dems have a number of cabinet ministers in their sights as they seek to make gains in traditional Tory heartlands dubbed the “blue wall”.