In defence of Rosie Duffield

Rosie Duffield’s magnificently rancorous resignation of the Labour whip has reduced the number of MPs on the government side who are able accurately to identify what a ‘woman’ is by about 30 per cent. This is, then, a grave loss to Sir Keir Starmer, who could have wheeled Rosie out every time he was asked the tricky question and told his interlocutors: ‘Ask her, she seems to know. I haven’t a clue. I have been shown diagrams, of course, many of them in full colour. But a proper definition still eludes me because, for me and the vast majority of my colleagues on the left, such things as diagrams and scientific facts are easily trumped by the post-truth wish–fulfilment pleading of shrill lunatics.’

I cannot remember a newly elected government losing one of its MPs so quickly and with such an expression of contempt and disgust, nor one which has so speedily won the scorn of the people who voted for it. Duffield, a wholly admirable MP for whom I once voted, never seemed to me to be on the hard left of the party – rather, she is idiosyncratic soft left and, crucially, not terribly concerned about her own career. In her letter to her erstwhile leader, Duffield described in full Starmer’s political ineptitude and lack of principle. Later she expanded upon the theme, suggesting that the government was in the hands of a group of ‘lads’: ‘They have now got their Downing Street passes. They are the same lads who were briefing against me in the papers and other prominent female MPs and I was really hoping for better, but it wasn’t to be.’

This is what happens when you let them vote, these women-people.