It is Prime Minister’s Questions today and there is certainly much for Kemi Badenoch to go on. From increased government borrowing to the IMF’s UK downgrade, there is a veritable smorgasbord of failure for her to choose from. But Mr S wonders if there might be a more personal angle for Badenoch, following Keir Starmer’s six-day silence over the Supreme Court trans ruling…
For yesterday in the House of Commons, Badenoch used Bridget Phillipson’s statement – a masterclass in gaslighting – to turn her guns on Labour. She noted Starmer’s years of flip-flopping on gender issues and raised the specific question of Rosie Duffield: one of the ‘few female Labour politicians with the guts to stand up for vulnerable women and girls’ in the words of JK Rowling.
Duffield, the now-independent MP for Canterbury, quit the Labour party in disgust last September. It followed years of attacks by party activists and briefings against her by a senior former member of Starmer’s team. So Badenoch asked the government frontbench yesterday:
Now that we have legal clarity, will the Prime Minister show some courage and do the right thing? Will he apologise to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), who faced so many security concerns as she was hounded out by the Labour party, and who was rebuked by the Prime Minister, and by many Labour MPs who are sitting there looking at me, for stating what the Supreme Court has now ruled to be true? Will the Minister apologise to the hon. Member for Canterbury?
Duffield replied on X to Badenoch, declaring, graciously:
Thanks to @KemiBadenoch whose brilliant speech just now was the actual truth, not a new rewritten convenient version if it. She has been one of the most consistent supporters of feminists and women’s sex-based rights, unlike any of those opposite now pretending to be of it.
So, will an apology to Duffield from Starmer on behalf of his party now be forthcoming? Don’t hold your breath…
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