by A popular meme is taken from an old headline on the satirical news website Clickhole: “Heartbreak: the worst person you know just made a great point.”
People tend to post the headline, or just the picture of the bad stock model they used to illustrate the piece, whenever someone they know accidentally contradicts their values on an issue some or other. Donald Trump accidentally said something progressive? Jeremy Clarkson believes in climate change? Piers Morgan came out as a Swiftie? Heartbreak.
I saw a lot of people using that meme on social media on Saturday evening, when MP for Canterbury Rosie Duffield resigned from the Labor whip. In a letter announcing his departure and an accompanying profile in the TimesDuffield slammed the government for its poor start to its first 10 weeks in office, highlighting the acceptance of gifts from donors, as well as the party’s stance on winter fuel payments and the cap on child benefit. She even blasted them for Diane Abbott’s treatment of the post-Corbyn version of the party.
To be clear, I’m not saying Labour’s first 10 weeks were all that bad. From the point of view of the scandals, many of the accusations against them were weak sauce, especially compared to the laundry list of ignorance that their predecessors inflicted on this nation. As far as I’m concerned, a pair of glasses or a football box isn’t expensive enough to put Keir Starmer anywhere near the likes of Boris Johnson.
But perception is reality, and the fact of the matter is that if enough people get caught up in a “scandal”, it eventually loses the air quotes. Labour’s optics have been in disarray for the last few weeks, and they will need to get their house in order if they don’t want to be upset by a general public accustomed to prime ministers who only obey them. for a month and a half.
Duffield, however, is probably the worst party-affiliated person who could make this point (except perhaps the ghost of John Stonehouse, a minister under Harold Wilson who has an article entitled “Faking own death”). on his Wikipedia page.
I lived in Canterbury for several years. It’s a strange city – part Tory stronghold and heart of British Protestantism, and part student town where I invented a drink called “Joseph Conrad’s Revenge” (basically just tequila and Capri Sun). I love it so much – it’s where I did my BA and MA, it’s where I had my first teaching job, and it’s where I met many of the friends I still have today.
So you can probably imagine my glee in 2017, when the city elected its first ever non-conservative MP. I didn’t live there at the time – by then I was banned from all the pubs and had to run away to Liverpool – but I’d heard a lot about Duffield. People were excited that a Labor MP – a woman, no less – was going to shake things up.
And boy did she shake things up. Within a few short years Duffield has made a name for herself as a key influencer, mainly due to her stance on transgender issues. Although she described herself as “non-trans”, she refused to recognize the identity of transgender people, identified herself as a “gender-critical male”, called trans women “biologically male”, and spoke she at conferences at the. An exclusive trans LGB alliance.
In the days when you could see people who liked her on Twitter/X, she was questioned by her ex-partner for a tweet that said “cosplay as heterosexual and gay is mostly heterosexual”. She was also investigated in relation to a tweet liked by Graham Linehan, which some people sought to minimize the persecution of trans people during the Holocaust (the investigation was later dropped). She has caused a lot of headaches for Labour, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many in the party are happy to see her back.
It is also worth pointing out that Duffield has previously abstained from votes to cut the winter fuel payment and end the limit on two child benefit – both issues that his letter cites as contributing to his departure. Apparently they are issues she believes in so strongly that they are worth giving up on, but not actually voting on.
During her time with the party, Duffield made a lot of noise and ruffled a lot of feathers, but didn’t seem to do much else. Like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the United States – who were elected on Democratic tickets but eventually switched independents when it became clear that their views did not align with the party at all – there is a real question about what held by Duffield in Labor in the country. first place.
She calls the party her “natural political home” in her letter, and praises the party’s ethos of speaking “for those of us without a voice”, but if she really believes in that principle she has done little to demonstrate it. during her tenure. In my opinion, she chose instead to weaken and undermine the voiceless by making horrible statements about transgender people. There’s probably nothing stopping her from hooking up with whatever partner she wants – we can unpack that irony later – but it’s still a bit of a cracker.
It is telling that she ran straight to the Times with her sour story, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she discovers that her “natural political home” sits on the other side of the aisle at some point in the near future – perhaps after the Conservatives to put their act together, if they were to do so. day never come. Either way, she won’t be clogging up Labor’s ranks with her attention-seeking and vitriol.
It’s in the best interests of both herself and Labor – it’s just a shame she had to waste so much of everyone’s time trying to find out what the rest of us already knew. achieve.
