Penny Mordaunt has accused Sir Keir Starmer of trying to trick the public, claiming he is "not really leading the Labour Party at all".
She said his decision to accept ex-Tory MP Natalie Elphicke into the party has "exposed" the way the Labour leader really works.
Speaking in the Commons this morning, she said: "The leader of the Opposition is the decorator crab of these benches, desperate to show that he’s not really leading the Labour Party at all.
"He’s channelled Margaret Thatcher, his deputy has praised Boris (Johnson), he’s expelled the Member for Islington North - Jeremy Corbyn - with great fanfare, a man he was campaigning to be prime minister only moments before."
Penny Mordaunt has accused Sir Keir Starmer of trying to trick the public, claiming he is "not really leading the Labour Party at all"
PA
Mordaunt added: "His exterior shell is stuck over with St George’s flags, his Gunners season ticket and several programmes from the Last Night of the Proms.
"What next: a photo op with a bulldog? A lecture on how misunderstood Enoch Powell was?"
Referring to Elphicke's defection, she said: "This is Operation Radish: the concerted effort to convince the British public that while the Labour Party might look red on the outside, at its heart it isn’t really at all.
"However, even the defection from our benches of one Labour’s most sternest critics cannot disguise the fact that Operation Radish is not going well."
Elphicke announced her defection from the Conservative Party yesterday just minutes before PMQs, with Starmer welcoming her to the party.
The MP for Dover, who was elected in 2019, took over from her husband who was jailed for two years in September 2020 for sexually assaulting two women.
PA
She was on the right of the Tory party, supporting Liz Truss in the 2022 leadership contest and being a member of the pro-Brexit European Research Group.
Reacting to her defection, Labour MP Sarah Champion expressed concern over "some of the things Mrs Elphicke had said defending her ex-husband from the sexual abuse allegations", which she said "don't sit well with me at all".
A spokesperson for the Labour leader said: "All those issues have been dealt with previously both in Parliament and in public".
The defection means that the Government's majority has more than halved since the general election, dropping from 80 to 38 seats.
Responding to Elphicke's defection, a Conservative Party spokesperson said: "The people of Dover and Deal will be disappointed having felt the impact of illegal immigration.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Elphicke was on the right of the Tory party, supporting Liz Truss in the 2022 leadership contest and being a member of the pro-Brexit European Research Group
PA
"They did have an MP who sat with the party fighting to tackle this issue head-on, now they have had an MP in a party that has worked to block our plans to tackle illegal immigration 139 times.
"We wish Natalie well as she now has to support Labour's amnesty for illegal immigrants and one that directly opposes her own views - it was only last year that she penned an article titled 'Don't trust Labour on immigration they really want open borders'.
