Don't Vote Labour (Pt 11)

Rosie Duffield: A Woman Scorned (Pt I)

The Canterbury MP had been badly treated by Labour for years. This was, of course, because of her stance on the trans issue. Like JK Rowling and the SNP's Joanna Cherry, she comes at the topic from a pretty mild, liberal viewpoint. She does not vilify trans individuals, but simply stands by her belief, rooted in biological fact, that a man cannot become a woman and vice versa. She does not even oppose people 'changing sex' and was even supportive of Labour's plan to modernise the gender reassignment certificate (GRC). Part of the plan was to make self-ID the criteria on which one is issued. I'm not sure whether Duffield agreed with that element. She certainly doesn't agree now.

Duffield also wants to keep female-only spaces owing to the obvious safety concerns. She is not a confrontational 'TERF' in the mould of Kellie Jay Keen or Graham Linehan, who do rather revel in provoking trans activists (they're correct, but they are definitely more on the nose). This distinction is of course not recognised by the modern left. To them Duffield is practically a Nazi. And the Labour Party have largely gone along with the demands for her to be censured, or at the very least sidelined.

Luckily for Duffield, Starmer's Labour have been flirting with social conservatism and realising that the public is not sold on the radical trans agenda. This, combined with the election being called at short notice, meant she was able to ride the wave and be selected as the Labour candidate.

Duffield had been one of 2017's surprises, getting elected to her seat by a majority of only 187 votes. There had never been a Labour MP in the constituency, and it had been Conservative-held since 1868. In 2019 she increased her majority tenfold, despite the Johnson effect, and in 2024 she stormed it with a margin of 18.4%. Corbyn made her a junior shadow minister to Dawn Butler (who we know well…). During Brexit, Duffield resigned from the front bench to vote for the UK to remain in the Single Market. She also supported a referendum on the EU withdrawal agreement (both black marks in my book). Duffield was very critical of Corbyn's leadership during  the anti-Semitism row, which attracted the opprobrium of the Labour left, and will not be forgiven even though she's now humiliated Starmer.

Duffield got a lot of acclaim for tearfully describing her experiences of domestic abuse in a 2019 Commons debate. It is a back-story, interestingly, that she shares with JK Rowling. It puts a certain complexion on her feminist objections to the radical trans agenda, and on the vitriol directed at her. Under Starmer, Duffield was made a party whip on April 2020. However she had to resign in May once she was found to have broken the Covid rules by visiting her boyfriend.

It was in August that year that the controversy around Duffield really blew up. I say controversy, but really she did nothing wrong - at least nothing that was proven. It began when Piers Morgan quote Tweeted a CNN post about 'individuals with a cervix'. Morgan, not unreasonably, asked "do you mean women?". Duffield 'liked' his Tweet, which attracted the ire of the social justice brigade. One of these was a Canterbury Labour activist who wrote: "Add to the list of reasons Rosie Duffield needs booting, she’s a transphobe too". Duffield replied "I'm a 'transphobe' for knowing that only women have a cervix....?!". Somebody else chimed in with an NHS page describing 'trans men with a cervix'. Duffield backtracked a little (demonstrating her liberalism), writing:

Of course this applies to some people, they'll know who they are and this advice is great. But the implication that one cannot describe oneself as a woman without inviting a pile-on is beyond ridiculous now. Almost 52% of the UK population are women...

In fairness, the presentation of her argument was not exactly tight here, but it is Twitter, not a Harvard debating society. When asked if she believed that ‘trans women’ were women, she replied about CNN's original post: "This isn't a post about transphobia, it's a post about female body parts...Hugely insulting to all women, trans or cis, in my opinion". Again, this shows a liberal weakness by using the term 'cis'. A true critic of the trans lobby will not even recognise that term.

This whole thing went viral, with Duffield trending for days on Twitter. She amusingly referred to the hysteria as a "tedious communist pile-on". It was now that the full spotlight of the radical trans activists and their useful idiots fell on Duffield. Pink News then pushed a story about one of the MP's staff resigning on August 14th. The lesbian woman, codenamed Sophie, objected to the Tweets and claimed Duffield's office was inundated with supportive correspondence from 'transphobes' and homophobes. According to her, Duffield seemed to be OK with this - or at least didn't explicitly say that she wasn't. Sophie also claimed Duffield kept talking about her being a lesbian and asking things like 'do you know Sandy Toksvig?'. These are not especially serious accusations, and they are only the word of one disgruntled member of staff.

Later on Twitter, somebody faked a Tweet by Duffield saying she was 'sick of representing [expletive] people' and was looking forward to getting a 'cushy media job' if she lost the seat. Her account was possibly hacked in the process. This also went viral, causing more venom to come her way.

Various Labour groups, including student and LGBT groups, tried to put pressure on Starmer to remove the whip from Duffield. To their credit, Wes Streeting, Jess Phillips and even the Archbishop of Canterbury came out to defend her during this episode, saying she was not 'transphobic'.

A second staff member quit in October 2020, citing Duffield's 'overtly transphobic views'. Duffield dismissed this claim as "absolute rubbish". When somebody replied in defence of the resigned woman, calling her brave, Duffield replied: “‘Bravery’?! Well, as you have a photo of her in your Twitter bio, I imagine your[sic] not at all biased much???”. This, it was deemed by the complainant's trade union, was an attempt to dox and thus endanger the individual. It was irresponsible, certainly - the sort of thing one might do without thinking - but likely not a deliberate attempt to harm the woman. 

Threats were, it seems, made against Duffield. A year later (2021), she chose not to come to the Labour conference in Brighton because she was fearful for her safety, or at least worried she would cause a distraction. "I mainly took the decision," she said, "not because I really thought I was going to be attacked, but because I did not want to be the centre of attention". This decision, apparently, followed a meeting with the Speaker, Labour's Chief Whip and the police. She did however take the stage at a 'gender-critical' fringe event, hosted by the 'LGB Alliance'. To again give credit where it's owed, Speaker Lindsay Hoyle and Mayor Sadiq Khan did say Duffield should be able to go to the conference without fear of harm.

Perhaps Duffield snubbing the conference was performative. Maybe her lack of presence there - and indeed her appearance at the fringe event - shows she *did* actually want to be a distraction. It is politics, after all. If that was the intention it worked, because as a result the 'cervix conundrum' and the LGB event came to beset the conference.

Andrew Marr interviewed Starmer on the second day and, discussing Duffield, asked him if it was transphobic to say only women have a cervix. Starmer replied: "Well, it is something that shouldn't be said. It is not right." This act of total cowardice caused consternation, and the media smelled blood. Every political figure, especially in Labour, was soon being asked the same question, and they invariably stumbled around trying to answer. My pet favourite was when Nick Ferrari asked Rachel Reeves and she could barely speak, eventually raging about how the question was 'inappropriate'. This was the same rage-mode she entered when Starmer had glitter thrown on him during his 2023 conference speech and she was filmed shouting "For God's Sake! For God's Sake!". As a result of the cervix question being asked en masse, the general 'what is a woman?' meme became inextricably linked with the Labour Party. To this day it still plagues them on every social media post they make. 

The story continues tomorrow.

Written by Ed Pond, 2024, all rights reserved