Rosie Duffield MP has, I know, had a difficult relationship with Labour ever since being elected MP for Canterbury in 2015. She has now been elected three times. But Starmer's behaviour has finally broken her faith in the party. This is her resignation letter, issued this afternoon. How many more must feel, quite reasonably, the same way?
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What price many more Labour MP’s will show inegrity by quitting and sitting as independents? Showing integrity is badly needed in the party but I doubt there are many MP’s in the party who understand the need to show it!
Johnson and his entourage let the genie out of the bottle. They were corrupt, we knew they were corrupt and they knew that “we” could do very little about it.
Free Gear Keir learned from the best and will change nothing.
Rosie has shown courage and integrity in her resignation letter. She sounds like a great MP.
I wouldn’t go that far….
@Richard
I know nothing about her. I have never heard of her.
Please spill the tea!
There are two big issues.
One is she is quite right wing economically.
The other is she is JK Rowling aligned on gender issues and that has created considerable controversy.
That’s it.
Wow! What a resignation letter. She didn’t miss and hit the wall did she? She hit him right between the eyes.
My best wishes to her and her Labour values that I remember from my youth and voted for then. I’m glad some still have them.
Many more, please.
Thank you Ms Duffield for expressing so eloquently the feelings of many of us.
Or is this the first strike in the defenestration of Starmer and cronies? Duffield has form as not the greatest MP nor a lefty. Since Starmer has buttress the leadership against being dethroned by members, loss of trust by MPs seems the only path.
You are right about her form.
She’s been problematic, to be kind, but I am still quite shocked by some of the left wing vitriol being aimed at her on Twitter. I have by no means always agreed with her, but the sentiments in this letter will reflect what I am, quite sure, many will think.
Living in Scotland, I don’t know this MP and based my reaction solely on the contents of her letter most of which I entirely agree with. I applaud her for that.
I’ve since seen the nasty comments on social media and she’s taking pelters for it. It’s a topsy turvy world, isn’t it, when the defenders of corruption, sleaze and greed in our PM and his cabinet come out in force against their own backbench MP who strongly objects to it and resigns from the party because of it.
Can’t they tell right from wrong?
Much to agree with
Thanks for sharing Rosie Duffield’s excellent letter.
So well written.
She’s said what millions of people are thinking.
Hopefully the first of many.
Well done Rosie.
Don’t bank on it, sadly. They do not have the integrity, courage or self-awareness to take action and support this stand made by Rosie Duffield. I do not know her history as an MP, however, reading her resignation letter she certainly speaks up for me and my views on Sir Starmer, and of course his acolytes, who repeatedly attempt to defend the indefensible. Tony Benn, John Smith, Robin Cooke et al must surely be spinning in their respective graves.
Like several on here living in Scotland I couldn’t really place her, but the name rang a bell and my wife reminded me she had “commented” on trans issues. (Pink News has many of the details).
Thing is, you can think someone to be insensitive, extreme, illogical, or plain wrong on some issues and absolutely spot on about something else. She’s got him to a tee – the only thing missing is his total ignorance about government money.
You summarise the contradictions in politics rather well
Saw a very interesting video on Tony Blair yesterday.
Blair stated that true leaders must first determine policy to solve problems than deal with the Politics and fallout.
Per Blair via my over simplified paraphrasing, “if politics is allowed to drive policy you get no solutions and but you do get new problems that are often greater that the original problem you were trying to solve such as with BREXIT.”
Do not agree with everything in the video below but I thought the interview with Blair was good on many levels and definitely informative for a non-UK person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-iGG4ffrVQ
He is wrong though: that claim assumes policy decisions are free of political judgement. Neoliberal to its core then.
Policy decisions are always political. Those who claim otherwise are not democrats.
@Richard
Thanks for your very valued opinion.
Eloquently damning.
She has a given a voice to many.
Just came across this: Harris (school academy chain) paid its chief executive, Sir Dan Moynihan, £485,000 to £490,000 a year in 2022-23, when seven of its executives were paid at least £190,000 each.
Anyone wanting to know where all our taxes go and why what were once public services are so poor now need look no further than this example. Another Blair “innovation”
Yes. Academy schools represent the privatisation of state education and we’re the brainchild of Lord Adonis. He is the one who also pushed the vastly over-specified HS2, and we know what has happened with that.
Is a UK Academy school the same same thing as a USA Charter school?
No idea…..
I agree, she has a problematic past, and helped in the smear campaign against Corbyn.
But she has certainly got Starmer’s measure. I’ve not seen a resignation statement like that since Geoffrey Howe complained about Margaret T breaking his bat (his speech eventually precipitated her resignation).
I wonder if any others will follow? I can’t see her joining the “independent” gang of five, maybe she’s got her eye on the Lib Dems?
I never thought a Labour revolt against Starmer would start with her!
There’s no escaping the “problematic” nature of Duffield. For those unaware of her form:
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/labour-mp-rosie-duffield-offered-tory-whip-after-abuse-over-transgender-views-jpmm9lkgm
https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/01/26/rosie-duffield-labour/
However, the letter sums up the views of a lot of ex-Labour members, so I try to remember the words and not the writer.
There are these issues, and her economics too
But,that does not mean her frustrations are not real.
I don’t think it’s wise to believe there has to be a blanket view against feminists’ wish to protect women’s rights in the trans issue. Many are totally with Rosie Duffield on this.
This is what Wes Streeting said about her trans position. (The Guardian)
Streeting spoke about the reaction of many women in the Labour party, including MPs, to his comments in a BBC Radio 4 interview in which he had urged trans rights campaigners not to try to “shut down” the author JK Rowling.
“I was inundated with women in the Labour party, including parliamentary colleagues, who I do not consider to be shrinking violets, who were basically saying: ‘I’m really glad you said this about having a better conversation, because I felt afraid about voicing my concerns’. And I thought, if some of the strongest women I know are feeling silenced, we’ve got a problem.”
Noted, but this is not a debate I think this site need address.
Views are honestly held on both sides and are not going to change. I have I my limited amounts of time. So I have decided this issue is for other places, purely pragmatically.
I completely understand Richard and agree it’s not a subject for an economy/political blog.
I was responding to Anne Cruise’s ‘evidence’ about Rosie Duffield’s ‘problematic’ nature which I felt I needed to challenge.
Thanks
More Labour under Starmer as corrupt as hell:-
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/sep/29/labour-water-industry-analysis-argue-against-nationalisation
The party is a write-off just like the Tories!
That report was utterly economically incompetent
Starmer and reeves are not the whole of the parliamentary Labour Party and personally I wouldn’t have left the Labour Party
From what she writes, she doesn’t believe the party she left IS the Labour Party…
I wonder if the next election might see a lot of Labourf MP’s deciding not to stand again as happened with The Tories in the last election
By that time it will all be too late and Reform UK will be in Government.
Like an earlier contributor, I live in Scotland and follow English politics as a ‘soap’ for entertainment, so I know nothing of this woman, but I approve of her letter. How did voters get to the stage that in desperation to be rid of the Tories they’d vote for something worse? We now have LINO, yet the Unions still support it – have they replaced their lost members’ subs with contributions from LINO’s monied backers too? A slight update of Robert Burns’ poem, written against the Scottish ruling class selling out their country: ‘Such a Parcel of Rogues’ to apply to the UK.
We need another acronym: PMINO. Bought and paid for with billionaires gold.
‘How did voters get to the stage that in desperation to be rid of the Tories they’d vote for something worse?’ If I remember correctly, even tories themselves were positively and disgracefully encouraging people to vote them out, to absolve them from the responsibility of correcting their many mistakes and misdemeanours.
That is one humdinger of a resignation letter! Both barrels of a 12 bore right between the eyes.
It certainly sums a lot up. I’m still trying to grasp the sheer incompetence of the withdrawal of the WFA, something which will affect my wife who is a pensioner. I will check whether she can apply for pensions credit but I think as a couple we’ll be just over the income level required to claim it.
Thanks a lot labour. Pure ******* genius, when all you had to do was reverse Hunt’s totally irresponsible cuts to NI, which cost £20BN/annum.
Especially in view of the fact that so many people are applying for pension credit it looks as though there’ll be bugger all savings anyway.
And then to see Starmer and others getting thousands in gifts from donors when as MPs and ministers they’re easily in the richest 5% of the population.
A point she makes with eloquent fury. And also the problems with Brexit, housing, sewage etc which this useless government don’t appear willing or able to solve.
The popular suggestion is while removing the WFA makes no sense in itself, it sets a useful precedent for applying means testing universally as a step towards ending state provision, herding us all into the welcoming maw of the private insurance industry. Lots of lovely gravy for all involved, politicians and their corporate backers alike!
There never was going to be any financial saving by means-testing the WFA. The Chancellor neglected to factor in the cost of increased hospital admissions and morbidity caused by older people trying to live in under-heated homes. Although she may have taken into account the gains from increased pensioner mortality.
“Especially in view of the fact that so many people are applying for pension credit it looks as though there’ll be bugger all savings anyway.”
And at least the winter fuel allowance would have gone back into the economy rather than being taken away from central funds.
Clement Attlee must be turning in his grave.
[…] Labour: the resignations begin Funding the Future […]
Perhaps Duffield is mindful of the rumours swirling around the alleged forthcoming outing of Starmer for… something… and has become convinced, by what I couldn’t say, it would be better to disassociate herself from him before any such event rather than after.
Rumours?
There are rumours I hear….
I can see The Collective getting a lot bigger
Crikey,
No mincing of words there!
Rosie Duffield is far from the “insensitive, extreme, illogical, or plain wrong” person another commentor accused of her above. We live in age where some people are so permanently offended they won’t think twice about righteously cancelling or rubbishing the name of someone with whom they disagree. Pointedly ignoring such immoral behaviour, or remaining silent when others parrot the unevidenced accusations, is to perpetuate it.
I think she has shown huge courage and integrity and is to be applauded. Thank goodness someone has been brave enough to say what so many socialists think, though most have been cancelled by Starmer’s Labour.
So many in the Left have been outright abused by the ‘purity police’.
Witness the Green Party’s former deputy leader Sharir Ali being expelled just this week for his ‘hateful’ position on the trans issue. This is all the more incredible, given that the Green party has just thrown half a million pounds of its members money on legal costs LOSING to Sharir in a court case.
More here… https://greensinexile.org.uk/the-hounding-of-shahrar-ali
As a Green, I am absolutely disgusted at this naked bullying behaviour against decent people.
There must have been a better way of managing this difference of opinion.
Indeed, but the fact that there are more discrimination cases in the pipeline is testament to the reality that a difference of opinion on this topic is not tolerated.
This is a sad tale of ‘entryism’ where a dedicated fringe element has gained control of the party machine. Something that, being a welcoming party, the Greens have always been vulnerable to. Especially so, as the mantra under which ‘self ID’ is sold is ‘inclusivity’. And now the purge of non-believers is in full flow, with many members being suspended. Only co-leader Adrian Ramsay has expressed concern at a possible misuse of the disciplinary process. However there is no sign that the rest of the leadership team agree.
The Greens’ position on the big gender issue is the reason I could never have voted for them, locally or nationally.