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Rosie Duffield has quit as a Labour MP, criticising leader Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to scrap winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners and also his decision to retain the two-child benefit cap for parents.
In a three-page letter, published in the Sunday Times, she also slammed his treatment of fellow MP Diane Abbot, as well as his “managerial style and technocratic approach.”
She plans to sit as an independent MP. Below is her letter in full.
Dear Sir Keir,
Usually letters like this begin, "It is with a heavy heart..." Mine has been increasingly heavy and conflicted and has longed for a degree of relief.
I can no longer stay a Labour MP under your management of the party, and this letter is my notice that I wish to resign the Labour Party whip with immediate effect.
Although many "last straws" have led to my decision, my reason for leaving now is the programme of policies you seem determined to stick to, however unpopular they are with the electorate and your own MPs.
You repeat often that you will make the "tough decisions" and that the country is "all in this together". But those decisions do not directly affect any one of us in Parliament. They are cruel and unnecessary, and affect hundreds of thousands of our poorest, most vulnerable constituents.
This is not what I was elected to do. It is not even wise politics, and it certainly is not "the politics of service".
I did not vote for you to lead our party for reasons I won't describe in detail here. But, as someone elevated immediately to a shadow cabinet position without following the usual path of honing your political skills on the backbenches, you had very little previous political footprint. It was therefore unclear what your political passions, drive or direction might be as the leader of the Labour Party, a large movement of people united by a desire for social justice and support for those most in need.
You also made the choice not to speak up once about the Labour Party's problems with antisemitism during your time in the shadow cabinet, leaving that to backbenchers, including new MPs such as me.
Since you took office as Leader of the Opposition you have used various heavy-handed management tactics but have never shown what most experienced backbenchers would recognise as true or inspiring leadership.
You have never regularly engaged with your own backbench MPs, many of whom have been in Parliament far longer than you, and some of whom served in the previous Labour government.
You have chosen neither to seek our individual political opinions, nor learn about our constituency experiences, nor our specific or collective areas of political knowledge. We clearly have nothing you deem to be of value.
Your promotion of those with no proven political skills and no previous parliamentary experience but who happen to be related to those close to you, or even each other, is frankly embarrassing.
In particular, the recent treatment of Diane Abbott, now Mother of the House, was deeply shameful and led to comments from voters across the political spectrum. A woman of her political stature and place in history is deserving of respect and support, regardless of political differences.
As Prime Minister, your managerial 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 fourteen years to be mandated by the British public to return to power.
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.
How dare you take our longed-for victory, the electorate's sacred and precious trust, and throw it back in their individual faces and the faces of dedicated and hardworking Labour MPs?! The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale. I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party.
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 those people can grasp — this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour Prime Minister.
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 or remorse?
I now have no confidence in your commitment to deliver the so-called "change" you promised during the General Election campaign and the changes we have been striving for as a political party for over a decade.
My values are those of a democratic socialist Labour Party and I have been elected three times to act on those values on behalf of my constituents. Canterbury made history when its voters elected their first woman, and only non-Conservative, MP since the seat was created in the thirteenth century.
My constituents elected an independent-minded MP who vowed to put constituency before party, and to keep tackling the issues that most affect us here — Brexit fallout, funding for our universities, our desperately struggling East Kent NHS, dire housing situation, repeated sewage pollution and protecting our vital green spaces.
I am confident that I can continue to do so as an independent MP guided by my core Labour values.
Sadly, the Labour Party has never shown any interest in my wonderful constituency in the seven years that I have been in Parliament. But I am proud of my community and will continue to serve them to the best of my ability.
My constituents care deeply about social issues such as child poverty and helping those who cannot help themselves. I will continue to uphold those values as I pledged to do when I first stood before them for election in 2017.
As someone who joined a trade union in my first job, at seventeen, Labour has always been my natural political home. I was elected as a single mum, a former teaching assistant in receipt of tax credits. The Labour Party was formed to speak for those of us without a voice, and I stood for election partly because I saw decisions about the lives of those like me being made in Westminster by only the most privileged few. Right now, I cannot look my constituents in the eye and tell them that anything has changed. I hope to be able to return to the party in the future, when it again resembles the party I love, putting the needs of the many before the greed of the few.
Yours sincerely,
Rosie Duffield MP
