A Labour MP has resigned from the parliamentary party after criticising Keir Starmer’s “cruel and unnecessary” policies and lambasting the prime minister’s “managerial and technocratic approach” to politics. In a furious letter announcing her decision, Rosie Duffield, the Canterbury MP, said she felt relief in making the decision. She said the row over freebies handed to Starmer and his top team demonstrated that “sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale”. It is thought that it is the fastest an MP has given up their party’s whip after an election in modern times. While Duffield had been vocal in her opposition to Starmer on several occasions, the fury of her departure will serve as a further blow to the prime minister amid criticisms of his early months in Downing Street.
Duffield said the behaviour of Labour figures who accepted gifts from donor Lord Alli had left her “so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party”. She also launched a vitriolic attack on the decision by Starmer to make unpopular decisions in order to keep spending under control – most notably the refusal to end the two-child limit on benefits and the cut to pensioner winter fuel payments. “Someone with far-above-average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives’ two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of these people can grasp –… this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour prime minister,” she wrote in the letter. Criticising the decision by Starmer to force his MPs to vote against a Conservative motion against the cut to winter fuel payments, she added: “Forcing a vote to make many older people iller and colder while you and your favourite colleagues enjoy free family trips to events most people would have to save hard for – why are you not showing even the slightest bit of embarrassment?” She said she was resigning the whip with “immediate effect” and will now sit as an independent MP. While Duffield was furious in her denunciation of Labour policies, she was also highly critical of Starmer’s leadership style and political judgment, suggesting he had been naive in his approach. “As prime minister, your managerial style and technocratic approach, and lack of basic politics and political instincts, have come crashing down on us as a party after we worked so hard, promised so much, and waited a long 14 years to be mandated by the British public to return to power,” she wrote. “Since the change of government in July, the revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous. I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear.” While Duffield’s criticisms are by far the most vociferous expressed by a Labour figure in public, there will be concerns that some chime with those made in private by Labour MPs and ministers during the party’s conference last week. Some were in despair about Starmer’s inability to close down stories about freebies and the pay of his chief of staff, Sue Gray. Some regarded it as a symptom of his failure to set a clear narrative in office, once Labour’s popular plea to remove the Tories from office had been achieved. However, Duffield is likely to face criticism from former colleagues over departing the party little more than two months after getting elected under its banner. She had repeatedly clashed with the leadership on the issue of gender and trans rights.