Cummings scandal: Duffield right to resign for breaching lockdown; Labour MPs wrong to back her
Rosie Duffield: she broke lockdown to meet her married lover.
This is an open-and-shut case, isn’t it?
Rosie Duffield seems a nasty character. The Labour MP for Canterbury marched in the ‘lynch’ mob with Ruth Smeeth and others to have Marc Wadsworth ejected from the Labour Party in the kangaroo court that was his hearing before the party’s National Constitutional Committee.
She campaigned for Chris Williamson to get the same treatment from his kangaroo court (NCC) hearing.
Now she has been caught breaking lockdown – possibly more scandalously than Dominic Cummings – in travelling to meet her lover, who happens to be married. So she’s an adulteress. Shocking behaviour, and a terrible example to set – especially at a time when her party leader has been (rightly) criticising Cummings:
EXC: Labour whip Rosie Duffield quits over lockdown lover… pic.twitter.com/XgxpB5b9YR
— MoS_Politics (@MoS_Politics) May 30, 2020
In contrast with Cummings, Duffield has done the right thing: she has resigned from her job as a Labour Whip. Here’s the reason it’s right:
So Rosie Duffield who joined a lynch mob to get Wadsworth out,demanded Williamsons expulsion + smeared Labour activists whose efforts got her elected in no hope seat Canterbury …is a liar, a cheat+ a hypocrite in her private life too?
Good riddance
— Coolagorna (@trueclausefour) May 30, 2020
The hypocrites in this situation are any Labour MPs who have voiced support for Ms Duffield, saying she shouldn’t quit, after spending more than a week saying Cummings had behaved appallingly and should quit.
Labour MPs "privately backing" Rosie Duffield, whilst calling for Dominic Cummings to go is peak hypocrisy
When Opposition MPs say things like this to the press, the Mailnon Sunday of all papers too, it only helps the Tories.
Consistency matters.
— Alex Tiffin (@RespectIsVital) May 30, 2020
That is the scandal in this story and Keir Starmer needs to take action before the tabloids use it to drag him down. And just when Labour was catching up with the Tories in the polls, too.
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I like Rosie Duffield as she helped me get a new front door when my front door got damaged, whatever else she may have done.
Whot a joke labour catching up in poles if there was election stammer would lose has for this woman karma has a funny way of coming back to bite
I live in Kent. Rosie Duffield is, indeed, a part of the centrist Labour smear machine.
BUT (and it pains me to say this) her two victories in a row in Canterbury were an inspiration to many Labour members. Canterbury had always seemed such a Tory stronghold,part of the Tory “Bue Wall” you might say.
Her victory in 2017 seemed part of the Corbyn surge that brought us so close to power.
How shocked we were when she leaped into action within days of election, joining the anti-Corbyn faction as if she had been a tired, old Blairite MP for years.
The Tories suggested that the number of students at the large local Universities, anxious to avoid the huge debts coming their way, had caused the swing to Labour.
Some truth in this. After all, it should be Labour POLICIES that get us votes, not the personality of the candidate.
But she won in 2019 as well, basically because a lot of anti-Brexit Lib Dems saw her as the best chance of defeating Brexit. In fact, the official Lib Dem candidate stood down and urged a Labour/Duffield vote.
Either way, it is very hard around these parts to call for serious action against her because, frankly, we would struggle to retain the seat with a more genuine Labour candidate. Not impossible as the nature of the seat is changing, ie more young people generally, more students, a permanent layer of low paid workers etc facing London house price rises etc.
But she retains the image of being Labour but not frightening while her very personal campaigns against domestic violence have won her grudging respect in many parts of the Party.