Rosie Duffield’s lament for what Labour has lost will resonate
Sir Keir Starmer and his administration are breaking all sorts of political records. The Prime Minister won the biggest Commons majority ever secured on such a low proportion of the vote. His personal popularity has fallen faster than any new Downing Street incumbent. Now, he has seen one of his backbenchers voluntarily give up the whip less than three months after being elected, also unprecedented in recent times.
Rosie Duffield, MP for Canterbury, has long been at odds with others in her party because she has taken a courageous stand in the row over the recognition of trans rights. She has opposed the encroachment of women-only spaces by people who were born men but claim to have changed gender. For representing the views of the great majority of the population she was traduced and abused by her own colleagues.
In her resignation letter she laments the promotion of inexperienced MPs who happen to be friends of Sir Keir or who are related to one another. But her principal complaint is about the double standards on show in the Government’s early days, withdrawing benefits from pensioners while “accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most … people can grasp”.
She told Sir Keir that she was “ashamed” of what he and his “inner circle” had done to “tarnish and humiliate our once proud party”. This was a very personal attack on the Prime Minister and his leadership style for which Ms Duffield can expect to feel the full force of the party’s wrath.
But there is a great deal in what she says that is shared privately by many Labour MPs, by no means all of them on the Left. Hers is unlikely to be the last resignation.