On the 29th of September, Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield resigned the Labour whip, becoming this parliament’s 14th independent MP. The speed of this resignation is notable, Duffield is now the fastest MP to resign from their party after a general election in modern political history.
The reason offered for her resignation was related to the government's decision to cut the winter fuel relief payment previously provided to pensioners, whilst senior figures in the party have been found accepting large gifts (such as clothing, event tickets and use of properties) by party donors. Duffield also criticised Starmer's style of leadership, and claimed that he has a ‘problem with women'.
Duffield's resignation, combined with the earlier suspension of seven MPs over their rebellion on scrapping the two child benefit cap, means that the government majority is down to 158, which, whilst still huge, is a significant reduction from the 174 it started from following the general election. Some (very crude) maths suggests that if the government continues to lose MPs at this rate, it will be operating as a minority government before the end of its third year. There are a few reasons why this almost certainly won't happen: at least some of the suspended MPs are expected to be given back the whip in a few months, and the vast majority of Labour MPs, particularly the 2024 intake, are much more closely aligned with the leadership than either Duffield or the suspended seven are and are less likely to be suspended from or resign the whip. It does, however, demonstrate that Starmer's coalition of support is weaker than the number of MPs suggests, and that issues like the winter fuel cuts are important to sections of the party other than the left - Duffield, who was prior to the election the only Labour MP in Kent, is typically considered to be on the right of the party.
Despite both being viewed as on the right of the Labour party, Rosie Duffield has never had a strong relationship with Keir Starmer's Labour leadership. For a month and a half in 2020 she was appointed as a shadow whip, resigning in disgrace after breaking lockdown rules, and since then has remained a backbencher.
She has, for some time now, spoken about feeling disconnected from her party and the leaders office, telling the Times in June: “sometimes I feel completely independent”. In the same interview, she accused Starmer of “gaslighting” her, and said that she counts right wing conservative MP Kemi Badenoch (then a cabinet minister, now a Tory leadership contender) as a friend, but did not consider Starmer one. The major reason she felt so at odds with the party membership and leadership may be due to her highly controversial and often criticised anti-transgender views.
But what exactly are those views? Duffield’s anti-transgender activism is often portrayed as simply liking a few tweets. Indeed it is true that she was twice investigated by the Labour party for liking tweets, one which falsely claimed that trans people are “mostly heterosexuals cosplaying as the opposite sex and as gay”, and another more recently which arguably tried to erase the persecution of trans people during the Holocaust.
Duffield has done more than just like tweets. She regularly refuses to address trans people by their preferred pronouns, and has spoken at conferences held by fringe anti trans group, the LGB Alliance, one branch of which was named a “far-right hate and extremist group” by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. In addition to this, several members of her staff (including at the time her only LGBT staffer) have resigned from her office, citing her views as the reason why. It would make sense, then, for Duffield to have quit a party that definitively disagreed with her stance on the topic that she has been the most vocal on. The Labour party as it currently stands, however, does not fit this description.
Though the Labour party have said that they will “modernise and reform” trans rights, they have been heavily criticised for their stances on the issue. One criticism is that, until recently, Duffield still had the Labour whip, despite the various offensive things she has said. Another is that, during their time in opposition, Labour refused to oppose the Conservative government’s blocking of the Scottish parliament’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill.
The leadership has also scrapped the party’s commitment to implementing gender self identification policies. Minister of State for Women and Equalities Anneliese Dodds has been criticised for meeting with the aforementioned LGB Alliance. Health secretary Wes Streeting has also been criticised for his views on trans rights, including retracting his earlier statement that "trans women are women, trans men are men". Labour at present is not a welcoming environment for transgender people, in large part due to the campaigning of Rosie Duffield.
An important implication of Duffield's decision to relinquish the government whip is that it is, arguably, anti-democratic. As previously mentioned, Duffield is the fastest MP to abandon a party whip after a General Election in a very long time. Only a few months ago she stood and campaigned as a Labour candidate. It is impossible to know how many of the 19,531 people in Canterbury who voted for her did so based on her personal appeal, and how many did so because they wanted a Labour MP and a Labour government. It is also impossible to know what would have happened if Duffield had quit her party before the election, and had to stand against a Labour candidate. It is not unreasonable to guess, however, that if this had been the case, an independent Duffield would have been unable to overcome the incredibly successful Labour campaign, and would no longer be an MP. Rosie Duffield's constituents voted to be represented by a Labour MP, and in resigning the whip, especially if this was something she considered prior to July, she is acting against their democratic interests in depriving them of one.
It is impossible to know whether her reasons for doing so are cynically premeditated or spontaneous and principled, but one thing is almost certain: we have not heard the last of Duffield and her transphobia.
