don’t hand it to her, but do enjoy her resignation

  • Post last modified:September 29, 2024
  • Reading time:13 mins read


On Saturday 28 September, Labour MP Rosie Duffield resigned from Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. In her resignation letter, she highlighted the same issues that everyone else has – namely the “cruel and unnecessary policies” and the “sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice”. This is obviously embarrassing for Starmer coming on top of his plummeting popularity and inner-party rebellions, but there’s another humiliation on top of this one.

As Novara Media’s Ask Sarkar pointed out over her resignation:

Sinking ship

In her resignation letter, Rosie Duffield said what most people are thinking:

Someone with far-above-average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives’ two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of these people can grasp — this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour prime minister.

As written, it’s a fair point.

Some Labour defender are arguing that Labour ministers are good to accept freebies as long as they declare it; Labour detractors are of the opinion that a bribe is a bribe regardless of the added bureaucracy. On top of this, Starmer has failed to declare gifts multiple times, and Labour’s key donor lord Alli has failed to declare his ‘interests in a tax haven firm‘ according to openDemocracy.

Some have wondered if lord Alli donates so much to Labour because they’ve agreed to not look too closely at his favoured tax loopholes.

But no, that can’t be right, can it?

The donations were declared, after all. There couldn’t be some secret understanding between donor and politician that simply isn’t recorded in the register – what a silly suggestion.

Speaking of Starmer’s defenders, this is the best defence they can concoct for the Duffield resignation:

This would make sense if she didn’t resign over policies that Labour declared and enacted after the election. We’re no defenders of Duffield (believe us, we’ll get to that), but if you’re going to criticise her, you need to make some effort to understand what you’re criticising.

Some Starmer-detractors have highlighted principles Duffield lacked, but believe us – these aren’t the ones that bother Dunt:

Duffield also said:

Forcing a vote [on the winter fuel payment] to make many older people iller and colder while you and your favourite colleagues enjoy free family trips to events most people would have to save hard for — why are you not showing even the slightest bit of embarrassment?

Another good question – it’s almost as if Starmer lacks any sense of shame or humanity. After all, this is the same Starmer who made a big point there being ‘one rule for the Tories, and another for everyone else’:

In fairness, Starmer was talking about instances in which the Tories openly broke the rules (and in several instances apparently broke the law). We can, however, apply the same ‘one rule’ logic to donations. In many professions, employees can’t receive gifts because it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest. This is true of civil servants, police officers, nurses; it’s even true in the private sector for procurement officers. The public know this. And yet Starmer expects us to accept that politics is the one arena in which conflicts of interest don’t matter.

It’s almost as if there’s one rule for them and another for everyone else.

Speaking of duelling expectations, Duffield also said this:

I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party.

And now we’ll get to the humiliations caused by Duffield.

Shame to go around

Firstly, we should note Rosie Duffield’s aversion to MPs accepting ‘donations’ hasn’t always extended to herself:

Regardless of that, she is correct to point out that the freebies stand out more when accepted from a party which:

  • Is inflicting austerity on already-impoverished old people.
  • Promised capital-C ‘Change’.
  • Decried ‘one rule for them’ politics.

She has also accepted tens of thousands less than Starmer – a man who attracts freebies like Jupiter attracts moons. The argument still stands that ‘donations’ of this kind shouldn’t exist at all, but either way, it’s worth knowing the full picture. And speaking of that fuller picture, the big problem people have with Duffield has always been what she describes as her ‘gender-critical’ views – ‘gender critical’ views like this one:

Duffield also has a habit of policing the behaviour of other LGBTQI+ people:

As Lexi Bowen wrote on medium:

In 2023, Duffield liked a tweet from the transphobic abuser and former comedy writer Graham Linehan that appeared to include Holocaust revisionism, denying that trans people and gay people were targets of the Nazis. She also appeared on Linehan’s podcast and claimed, falsely, that trans children were being allowed to “cut your body parts off and render them completely infertile.”

She added:

Duffield also outright lied in the House of Commons during a debate on the Scottish Gender Recognition Bill, claiming that the reforms to Scotland’s gender laws would “allow anyone at all to legally self-identify as either sex” and enter women’s changing rooms, domestic violence refuges, and other spaces. This is, of course, categorically not true, and she was heckled for talking “absolute rubbish” by other MPs within the House. That didn’t stop her from doing it and continuing to do it, mind.

Highlighting Labour’s humiliation in all this, Bowen notes:

And it is worth pointing out here that Labour thinks this behaviour is acceptable. Not only has the Party repeatedly refused to investigate the MP for her transphobia, but former Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting even claimed that his turn toward gender-critical views came when he “saw the way my colleague Rosie Duffield was being treated.” While Keir Starmer said in an interview on LBC that he believed Duffield was an “important voice” within the Party. But Rosie Duffield is a hateful bigot who makes false claims about gender-affirming surgery, gleefully insults trans people as a “joke,” ignores historical facts about the Holocaust, and constantly paints trans women as predators, and I don’t think anyone should be standing up for that.

While the Labour Party as a whole has largely tolerated Duffield, MP Nadia Whittome is among those who are happy to see her go:

Rosie Duffield: “stupid as fuck and also deeply inarticulate”

So why do we think Rosie Duffield resigned?

Does she actually oppose what’s going on, or does she feel slighted by the party not providing full-throated support to her transphobia, and she saw this as the best path to revenge?

It’s possibly a bit of both, but certainly a lot of the latter.

And as some have noted, she almost certainly had had help in orchestrating this devastating blow:

While it would be better to see an MP with less reprehensible positions take this stand, Starmer rightfully deserves the additional dent to his standing:

You don’t have to hand it to Duffield, but it’s entirely enjoyable to see Starmer’s hand diminished by her actions.

Featured image via GBNews (YouTube) / Keir Starmer (YouTube)





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