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hello and welcome to the special Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots.

I'm joined today by Spectated political editing and the former MPM

broadcaster Charles Brandreth.

Now Defectors have been in the news a lot recently and we thought we get

Charles on to talk a bit about what it was like working the whips office at the time

in the 90s but first of all Katie recently we've had two in two weeks we had

Dan Poulter then we had Nataleelphic both going from the Conservatives to

Labour there's lots of talk in Parliament right now a potential third

defector in many weeks talk us through what's happening and the mood in both

parties right now well as she just explained there's been defections

recently I think now since there's been two in a row there's obviously heightened

paranoia in the Tory ranks effectively that they could be having a drip-trip of MPs moving

from the Tory party to labor. It's funny because I think about you know six weeks

two months ago we're all talking about defectors to the Reform Party and the

Tory to reform defections after Lee Anderson defected. And Natalie Elfick was certainly someone

who the Tory Whip's Office thought might defect a reform. they never considered that she might defect to Kistama's party.

So I think that speaks a little to the fact that there's local election results, I don't think were as decisive for reform as perhaps they would have wanted them to be.

And if you are an MP wants to send a signal and perhaps line up, unless there's not all of them,

...