Rosie Duffield quits Labour with damning attack on Keir Starmer

Rosie Duffield has stop as a Labour MP, attacking Sir Keir Starmer’s “merciless and pointless insurance policies” and the freebie row engulfing the social gathering.

The Canterbury MP and very long time critic of Sir Keir will sit as an unbiased after resigning the Labour whip “with rapid impact”.

In a damning resignation letter, Ms Duffield lashed out at Sir Keir’s acceptance of greater than £100,000 of garments, glasses and lodging from Labour peer Waheed Alli.

And she or he condemned the prime minister’s choice to retain the two-child profit cap whereas scrapping winter gas funds for thousands and thousands of pensioners.

Ms Duffield has usually complained about Sir Keir and the path of the social gathering. The Labour chief has beforehand referred to as for tolerance within the trans debate after she aired her views.

Within the letter, printed in The Sunday Occasions, Ms Duffield stated: “The sleaze, nepotism and obvious avarice are off the size.

“I’m so ashamed of what you and your internal circle have accomplished to tarnish and humiliate our as soon as proud social gathering.”

Turning to coverage bulletins made since Labour got here to energy, she stated: “Somebody with far-above-average wealth selecting to maintain the Conservatives’ two-child restrict to profit funds which entrenches kids in poverty, whereas inexplicably accepting costly private items of designer fits and glasses costing greater than most of those folks can grasp — that is fully undeserving of holding the title of Labour prime minister.”

She added: “Forcing a vote [on the winter fuel payment] to make many older folks iller and colder whilst you and your favorite colleagues get pleasure from free household journeys to occasions most individuals must save exhausting for — why are you not exhibiting even the slightest little bit of embarrassment?”

Sir Keir has been beneath intense scrutiny over donations from Lord Alli, and it emerged on Saturday he had obtained an extra £16,000 from the distinguished Labour donor.

He has confronted requires an investigation over the affair, with the SNP calling on the Home of Commons requirements commissioner to launch a probe. The row has been dubbed “passes for glasses” after questions had been raised about who authorised a Downing Road cross for Lord Alli after Labour’s common election win.

Sir Keir additionally used Lord Alli’s £18m penthouse flat without cost in the course of the common election marketing campaign, saying it was to ensure that his son to have someplace peaceable to review for his GCSEs.

In July, Rachel Reeves introduced that older folks not in receipt of pension credit or different means-tested advantages will now not obtain winter gas funds from this 12 months onwards.

The choice got here as a part of a sequence of spending cuts to deal with a “black gap” within the public funds left by the earlier Conservative authorities introduced in July by the chancellor.

However the transfer, which is able to have an effect on round 10 million pensioners, sparked fury from backbench MPs, with Ms Duffield amongst these talking out towards it.

Within the damning resignation letter, Ms Duffield stated: “Prime minister, your managerial type and technocratic method, and lack of primary politics and political instincts, have come crashing down on us as a celebration after we labored so exhausting, promised a lot, and waited an extended 14 years to be mandated by the British public to return to energy.

“I can’t put into phrases how indignant I and my colleagues are at your whole lack of expertise about how you will have made us all seem.”

Ms Duffield is a pal of creator JK Rowling and was backed by Ms Rowling amid a row over her stance on ladies’s and trans rights.

She beforehand accused the Labour Occasion of exhibiting her the chilly shoulder over her views on the difficulty.

However she has denied her gender important views are the explanation for her quitting the social gathering, telling The Sunday Occasions: “With my [gender critical] views, all I wished was for these views to be taken critically and mentioned and I feel as a motion the Labour Occasion has shifted and we’re speaking about these issues now.”

Labour was approached for remark.