Oh dear. It’s not yet 48 hours since Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a general election and already tensions are running high. Now it transpires that Labour backbencher and vocal women’s rights campaigner Rosie Duffield was not invited to her own party’s election launch in Kent despite being an, er, Kent MP. Making a rather public show of party infighting is hardly a good start to election season…
A rather unimpressed Duffield took to Twitter — after she found out about the launch event on the social media platform — to write: ‘Well, day one has gone well then..! Strong women can’t be broken that easily, lads. And I have an army of them behind me, in front of me, beside me and holding me up.’ Indeed — and one of those strong woman is the internationally acclaimed author and gender critical campaigner JK Rowling herself. The Harry Potter writer took to social media to slam Sir Keir Starmer, posting:
It’s hard not to conclude that in spite of recent attempts at back-pedalling, Keir Starmer’s view on what Rosie Duffield and women in general are allowed to say about their own bodies hasn’t changed since 2021.
The author then shared a photo of the lefty Labour leader emblazoned with a quote of his from three years ago that reads: ‘[The phrase “only women have a cervix”] is something that shouldn’t be said. It is not right.’ Well known for his U-turns and after years of flip-flopping on the trans issue, Starmer more recently admitted that he does in fact agree with one of his most vocal MPs on women’s rights — but not enough to invite her to local events, clearly.
And JK Rowling isn’t the best person to get on the wrong side of, either. Not only does the writer have a strong following of over 14 million people on Twitter, she used to be a rather generous Labour donor — awarding the cash-strapped party £1 million during Gordon Brown’s premiership. Mr S doubts Starmer will get quite the same treatment…
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