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Rosie Duffield

British politician

Rosemary Clare Duffield (born 1 July 1971) is a British politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Canterbury since 2017. Originally elected as a Labour Party MP, Duffield resigned the Labour whip in late September 2024.

Rosie Duffield in 2017

Quotes

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2019

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"Labour MP moves colleagues to tears with domestic abuse story" (2019)

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Quoted by Kate Proctor in "Labour MP moves colleagues to tears with domestic abuse story" The Guardian (2 October 2019); Comments from a speech delivered during the second reading of the Domestic Abuse Bill concerning Duffield's experience of an abusive partner.
  • They don’t threaten criticise, yell or exert their physical strength in increasingly frightening ways.
    Not at the start. Not when they think you're sweet, funny and gorgeous. Not when they turn up to your third date with chocolates, then jewellery.
  • You learn that "I’ll always look after you" and "You’re mine for life" can sound menacing, are used as a warning over and over again.
  • In a strange city his face changes in a way you are starting to know and dread. In a way that tells you, you need to stay calm, silent and very careful.
    You read a city guide … mentally packing a day full of fun. But he seems to have another agenda.
    He doesn’t want you to leave the room. He’s paid a lot of money and you need to pay him your full attention. You are expected to do as you are told. You know for certain what that means, so you do, exactly what you are told.
    It’s when the ring is on your finger that the mask can start to slip and the promises sound increasingly like threats.
  • Those patterns continue: reward, punishment, promises of happy ever after, alternating with abject rage, menace, silent treatment and coercive control.

"Rosie Duffield: the story behind my Commons speech about domestic abuse" (2019)

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Interviewed by Rachel Sylvester in "Rosie Duffield: the story behind my Commons speech about domestic abuse" The Times (18 October 2019). Duffield's abusive relationship began shortly before she became an MP in 2017, ending in late 2018.
  • It was just a big load of scary noise, this giant person. When you’re bullied your brain starts to shut down. It’s protecting yourself. And you can’t think of the words; you’re not eloquent. I would misspeak, stutter, and he would exploit that.
  • He was totally withdrawing from me, to let me know that I was not to be spoken to, and I wasn’t to talk to him, or be touched, or anything, and that was really hurtful. But it was always my fault, always, always, always, without question. And that got established from day one, even when he was still trying to woo me and charm me. [At the end of an argument.] He’d come up to me very earnestly, very sincerely, and say to me, "Are you going to be my good girl, now?"
  • His tempers were very violent. I knew I had to be careful. There was always an underlying threat. He would drive incredibly aggressively, yelling at me when I was trapped in the car. That was scary stuff. Because the feelings are violent, the violence is there in the room with you. The raising of a fist or the hand is the next logical step. He didn’t hit me. He did other things that made me realise he was in control.

2021–2022

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  • I don’t talk about trans rights because I think it’s not my place to talk about trans rights. Trans people have got some great organisations and they’re very good at representing their rights, and that is just as it should be.
    Trans rights are the same rights as everyone else, but what concerns me is that there is a slight conflict in some cases between trans rights and women’s rights.
    Women’s rights are why I came to Parliament, and why I’m sitting here, because women are now visible in Parliament.
    I grew up in a very strong feminist household, and what really concerns me are the rights of women to have privacy and space, and the necessity to be in women’s refuge – not shared with someone with a male body.

"Speaker’s anger as extremists terrorise Labour MP Rosie Duffield" (2021)

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Quoted by Caroline Wheeler in "Speaker’s anger as extremists terrorise Labour MP Rosie Duffield" The Sunday Times (19 September 2021). As a result of threatening behaviour, Duffield had chosen not to attend the 2021 Labour Party conference in Brighton.
  • LGBT+ Labour now seem to hate my guts and I feared they’d have a massive go at me at conference [...] The people who threaten me I don’t think are actually likely to harm me. They just say it often and very loudly.
  • There are some women who get involved and want to be seen to be very woke ... but mostly it is men, and the same men that have trolled me ever since I got elected.
    So it looks like, feels like and smells like misogyny, and this is just the latest cause they have latched on to ... The fact that I am blonde — they call me a bimbo. The fact that I don’t like antisemitism. There is always something, but it is always the same people who attack me.
  • For the first time in my life, having been an ambassador for a gender-balanced 50:50 parliament, I would hesitate to encourage other women to come into politics [...] I would have to really think about what I was asking them to do, and putting people into this position when they are going to be on the front line of some pretty shitty abuse.

2023–present

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  • Many of us know that self-identifying as a woman does not make a person a biological woman who shares our lived experience. But for obvious reasons, these views are not voiced outside of closed rooms or private and secret WhatsApp groups. Even there, the most senior MPs often do not post a single word; they know exactly what’s at stake and not many of them want to be me. So for now, they mostly remain silent.
  • Is it starting to look like Labour has a women problem? It certainly is for the 7,000-strong group of women members, councillors and activists who make up Labour Women’s Declaration and had a stall at last year’s party conference refused.
    It is for Lesbian Labour, who were also stopped from exhibiting at last year’s conference. It is for Dr Karen Ingala Smith, the formidable feminist campaigner who compiles a list of women killed in the UK each year which is then read out in parliament by Jess Phillips every International Women’s Day, and who had her membership rejected after she made a few gender-critical joke tweets featuring kittens.
  • We're watching not only those white men that run things having the safe seats, giving themselves the safe seats, but then they're the ones that get to judge whether or not we get to be candidates.
    So that's incredibly uncomfortable for me to watch from a so-called progressive party. It needs cleaning up, it needs tackling. It was the same under Jeremy Corbyn's faction and time, it's exactly the same under Keir Starmer.
  • Today I have made the extremely difficult decision not to attend local hustings events during this general election campaign. Hustings are usually an enjoyable and interesting part of any political campaign, but sadly the actions of a few fixated individuals have now made my attendance impossible.
    The constant trolling, spite and misrepresentation from certain people - having built up over a number of years and being pursued with a new vigour during this election - is now affecting my sense of security and wellbeing. The result is that I feel unable to be focused on giving a clear presentation of the Labour Party's manifesto commitments.
  • Most backbenchers I'm friends with are women and most of us refer to the men that surround him [Keir Starmer], the young men, as 'the lads' and it's very clear that the lads are in charge. They have now got their Downing Street passes. They are the same lads who were briefing against me in the papers and other prominent female MPs.

Resignation letter from the Labour whip (28 September 2024)

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Latter to prime minister Keir Starmer, as cited in Caroline Wheeler "Rosie Duffield: Sleaze, nepotism and greed — why I’m quitting Labour", The Sunday Times (28 September 2024)
  • 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.
  • Forcing a vote [on the winter fuel payment] 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?
  • As prime minister, your managerial style 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 14 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 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,” she said. “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.”

About Duffield

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  • [In March 2023, Duffield] dared to like a tweet by the writer Graham Linehan, who was responding to a tweet by Eddie Izzard claiming that, had he lived in Nazi Germany, "I'd have been murdered for it". Linehan – and rightly, so in my view – retorted with a sarcastic, "Ah, yes, the Nazis, famously bigoted against straight white men with blonde hair."
    You might well think Izzard was wrong to make that comparison to Nazi Germany in trying to score points in the gender war. But remarkably, in Labour land, it is Duffield who is being investigated.
  • In the interests of full transparency, I should say that Rosie Duffield's a friend of mine. We'd probably have been friends no matter where or how we'd met, but we found each other as part of a group of women fighting to retain women's rights.
  • It seems Rosie has received literally no support from [Keir] Starmer over the threats and abuse, some of which has originated from within the Labour Party itself, and has had a severe, measurable impact on her life.
    But she fights on ... because she feels she has no choice. Like me, she believes the stakes are too high to walk away.
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