Starmer’s management, Duffield mentioned, was “extra about greed and energy than making a distinction … I simply can’t take any extra.”
In her resignation letter, printed within the Sunday Instances, Duffield mentioned Starmer had acted hypocritically by accepting lavish presents whereas sustaining a controversial cap on little one advantages and slashing winter gas funds for as many as ten million folks.
“Forcing a vote [on the winter fuel payment] to make many older folks iller and colder whilst you and your favourite colleagues take pleasure in free household journeys to occasions most individuals must save arduous for — why are you not displaying even the slightest little bit of embarrassment?” she wrote within the letter.
The departure of Duffield, who beforehand clashed with Starmer over trans rights, is a blow to a celebration that’s but to finish its first hundred days in workplace after profitable a sweeping parliamentary majority in July.
The brand new authorities has been consumed by scandal since revelations surfaced that the prime minister and shut associates had accepted costly presents — together with designer garments — from longtime Labour donor and peer Waheed Alli and different donors. Starmer himself is reported to have accepted £100,000 value of presents and has precipitated additional frustration by repeatedly defending his choice.
“All of us had our religion in Keir Starmer and a Labour authorities, and I really feel that voters and activists and MPs are being fully laughed at and fully taken without any consideration,” Duffield informed the BBC.
Duffield is the primary MP to voluntarily stop since Starmer took workplace, however her transfer follows the suspension of seven MPs earlier this 12 months who rebelled by calling for the two-child profit cap to be abolished.
In her letter, Duffield additionally lambasted Starmer’s “technocratic and managerial method,” citing his “promotion of these with no confirmed political abilities … however who occur to be associated to these near you, and even one another.”