Labour plays down Rosie Duffield resignation, as she says ‘revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering’ – UK politics live | Politics

Good morning. It is the first day of the Conservative party conference, and you would expect the news to be dominated by a fierce attack on the Labour leader. It is – but it is not come from any of the four candidates left in the Tory leadership contest (who have been campaigning all summer without saying anything that has engaged the public at large – voters are still not very interested in the party they rejected comprehensively on 4 July.) Instead it has come from Rosie Duffield, who was a Labour MP until early yesterday evening when she resigned the whip via a letter to Keir Starmer published in the Sunday Times.

As resignation letters go, this one’s a belter. Often MPs resign from government, or a a party, citing one particular issue. And it is usual to express some regret, some acknowledgment that the leader/party the MP used to support had at least some redeeming features. But this one is undiluted acid. If any of the Tory leadership candidates had given a speech along these lines, commentators would have regarded it as over the top.

Duffield, who has been MP for Canterbury since 2017 (a surprise win in what had been a safe Tory seat), has been semi-detached from the Starmer leadership for years because, as a gender critical feminist, she has frequently spoken out where she feels trans rights have been taken too far (she is friends with JK Rowling) and she felt ostracised by the parliamentary Labour party, where many MPs regarded her as extreme or reactionary on this issue.

But the letter does not talk about this. Instead she attacks Starmer’s leadership style, accusing him of “heavy-handed management tactics”, ignoring the views of his MPs, cronysim and disrespecting Diane Abbott. But at the heart of the leter is a withering attack on Starmer’s record accepting freebies, which he has defended over the last fortnight whilst also maintaining the two-child benefit cap (a welfare policy that helps push people into child poverty) and the winter fuel payments cut. Duffield says:

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 these people can grasp — this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour prime minister.

You can read the full letter here.

And here is Michael Savage’s overnight story, which says there is thought to be no precedent in modern times for an MP resigning the party whip like this so soon after an election.

Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, is doing a media interview round this morning. Speaking to Sky News this morning, he played down the significance of Duffield’s resignation, saying she had been unhappy in the party for a long time.

Pat McFadden on @SkyNews: “I regret Rosie [Duffield] has made this decision. Not a secret she’s been unhappy for a long time….I’m sorry she’s made the decision, I like Rosie,but she’s been unhappy for a long time”

Here is the agenda for the day:

8.30am: All four Conservative leadership candidates – Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat – are interviewed on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.

9am: Jenrick and Badenoch are interviewed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, is also on, representing Labour.

10am: Tugendhat, Badenoch and Jenrick are all interviewed on Times Radio.

1.30pm: Tugendhat takes part in an Q&A with the Conservative Women’s Organisation.

2pm: Jenrick takes part in a Q&A with at a Centre for Policy Studies fringe

2.30pm: Michael Winstanley, president of the National Conservative Convention (the volunteer wing of the party), opens the conference.

2.45am: Richard Fuller, the Conservative chair, speaks at the conference, opening a session featuring some candidates.

4pm: Russell Findlay, the news Scottish Conservative leader, Andrew RT Davies, the party’s leader in Wales, and Alex Burghart, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, speak in a session on the union.

5pm: Cleverly is interviewed on Times Radio.

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