Oh no Rosie

[InandOutlander]

I'm so sad to see her go, she was the shining light within the Labour camp.

I don't think men can become women so that's just rubbish

If an MP wants to cross the floor because they think in RD’s words

“The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale.”

Or another reason such as an antisemitic video or whatever so be it.

There should be no period where this isn’t a possibility

It keeps checks in place

Will you please stop misrepresenting me and singling me out. It is not OK.

Cassie if I'm confusing you with another poster I sincerely apologise. I just recognised your name and thought, this poster would never support Rosie Duffield, this poster is an ardent supporter of trans ideology.

I say again - if I'm mistaken, sincere apologies.

And that it happened so soon after the GE is a mark on Starmer not RD

He will take a hit on this

Thank you. I'm an old school radical feminist who knows people can't change sex, but I get smeared on here a lot so unsurprising you would have the wrong view of me.

Since we're repeating ourselves here, I think @noblegiraffe has given us a really good example of how you paint yourself into a corner.

Your initial argument, as I recall was along the lines of "I don't mind RD, I actually agree with the points she made, but she was elected on the Labour ticket very recently and it would strengthen her argument if she called a by-election".

That's fine. I don't have an objection to that.

What we seem to have ended up with is the following:

• RD is lying about her reasons for leaving the party
• RD's criticism of the party leadership is immaterial because we know she's lying about her motivation
• RD always intended to leave the party soon after the election (yes, this was being put about by anonymous "Labour sources" soon after the news broke)
• RD's motivation was to secure her MP salary for the next five years before making the move that she always intended to make
• RD has therefore defrauded the voters of Canterbury by knowingly misrepresenting herself as a Labour candidate

It seems to me that you're convicting her of corruption and, unless you're privy to private communications from RD, you're using an awful lot of telepathy to get there.

This also, conveniently, gets Starmer and his cabinet colleagues off the hook until a critic comes along whose intentions are pure enough.

It seems to me less complicated to look at her statements over a period of time and see someone who was hanging onto the party by her fingertips, hoping it would give her a reason to stay in.

Oddly enough, we don't usually make windows into politicians' souls. Nobody seems particularly interested in asking Starmer if he was sincere when he campaigned for Jeremy Corbyn to be PM. I think we all know he didn't believe a word of it.

Agreed - and I apologise if I derailed the thread.

Rosie - if you ever read this, know that many of us applaud you. What you did was pragmatic in my view. I'm sorry Labour let you down so badly, as it has failed so many of us.

RD's criticism of the party leadership is immaterial because we know she's lying about her motivation

I didn't say this at all.

It seems to me less complicated to look at her statements over a period of time and see someone who was hanging onto the party by her fingertips, hoping it would give her a reason to stay in....Oddly enough, we don't usually make windows into politicians' souls.

However, we do tend to be slightly more cynical when they say that their motivation was entirely pure yet there was £93k on the table.

Nobody seems particularly interested in asking Starmer if he was sincere when he campaigned for Jeremy Corbyn to be PM. I think we all know he didn't believe a word of it.

So we are allowed to distrust what politicians say when they say what their motivations are? 👍

Nobody seems particularly interested in asking Starmer if he was sincere when he campaigned for Jeremy Corbyn to be PM. I think we all know he didn't believe a word of it.
Apart from every interviewer in the run up to the GE 😂

People are allowed to have different opinions. RD has been vocally critical of Labour for a very long time, I was surprised personally she stood for them again and if you AS my name you'll see I said that before the Election.

For me it makes no sense for this to be "the straw that broke the camels back" especially when she hasn't mentioned womens rights. I think she was more aligned to the Momentum side of the party and it was a when, not if, she resigned.

It's sad on two fronts:

1. not fair on those of her constituents who voted for Labour 2) going to make her GC voice irrelevant as noone listens much to independents.

It is a bit like saying a bride who finds her husband shagging the bridesmaid on her wedding night and asks for a divorce clearly never intended to be married and underwent the wedding ceremony on false pretences. Rather than blaming the groom.

Yep. We might not always like the reason an MP has crossed quickly but we should keep the option

There’s no reason a gov is any less likely to need this check soon after GE than later on

Good point

I think she was more aligned to the Momentum side of the party

Tell me you don't know anything about Canterbury CLP without telling me you don't know anything about Canterbury CLP.

Rosie was on the Corbynites' shitlist for calling out antisemitism long before she spoke on gender issues, and long before the current Dear Leader said anything on the subject.

Of course, one of the best MPs I've ever dealt with was Sylvia Hermon, so maybe I have a sentimental weakness for difficult women who defy their party leaders.

This.

and see someone who was hanging onto the party by her fingertips, hoping it would give her a reason to stay in

Expecting people to believe that a £93k guaranteed job for 5 years wasn't a reason to stay in is a bit of a stretch.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/09/canterbury-tale-single-mum-becomes-towns-first-ever-labour-mp

Ben Hickman, 34, a university lecturer in English literature at the University of Kent, is a Momentum activist and spent the election campaign handing out leaflets and mobilising the young, who he said were energised by Corbyn’s politics. “We have a leadership with imagination and actual ideas about society,” he said.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.kentonline.co.uk/canterbury/news/amp/owen-jones-coming-to-kent-election-rally-215570/

2019 - Owen Jones, an outspoken supporter of the Labour Party, will be joining grassroots pro-Labour organisation Momentum, to campaign to "keep Canterbury red" at the upcoming election.
🤔

The Corbynistas tend to hate Starmer. See also John McDonnell, Zarah Sultana.

Great post.

I know John McDonnell of old. He's a cunt.

But he also buys his own suits.

What has the Labour-voting Canterbury constituents lost by her becoming an independent? The Party hierarchy already disliked her and refused to speak to her - that was well known before the GE. So her ability to influence from the inside was pretty much non-existent. Her ability to vote at party conferences was hit by security concerns that The Party and Kier did nothing to condemn. She was never going to become a minister under the current regime. If they elected her because they wanted someone to turf out the sleaze they saw under the Tory Government as outlined in the manifesto - they have that. She has not joined another party and as far as we know at the moment she may vote in line with the government on everything, apart from issues where there was clear disagreement prior to the GE.

That might seem like a slam dunk to you, bit frankly seems incredibly unconclvincing to me given as an ex-MP with a public profile she could pull in more than that as a consultant.

Howver even if that were the motivation, why in your view did she need to resign at all? Surely easier to keep smiling, do as she is told as a Labour backbemcher and take the money? Seems like a bad strategy to rock the boat, no?

Ask her on X. She's responding.

You have no convincing argument. Hence all the repetition.