Oh no Rosie

[InandOutlander]

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

If you're googling, can you see if you can find any other MP who resigned from a party weeks after standing for election on that party's manifesto, half of which time parliament was on recess? There also has to be zero surprise that they resigned because they were 'hanging on by their finger tips' in the party as it was, and people were surprised that they hadn't quit the party sooner.

If you can find that, then see whether people thought that was dodgy or not?

Those who are most having a go at Rosie are doing so because of her position on women's sex based rights

Hang on, is this being thrown in my direction? I can't keep up whether I'm a Tory, Labour, TRA or whatever else can distract from what I'm actually saying.

Tbf Starmer has plummeted very quickly and been exposed so an MP leaving is no great surprise. It’s more a comment on that

He’s lucky it’s just one. If he does stifle growth he’ll find the walls closing in

You really are scraping the barrel, why not be honest and spell it out to the electorate? Ah yes, because they knew it would lose them votes.

We all know you utterly adore Keir Starmer and for you he walks on water and can do no wrong, we also all know that you cannot abide and will denigrate any woman who does not tick all the boxes on your special purity sheet, of course you have no such test for men and especially not KS.

If it had been Tories doing any of this and not your sainted Sir Keir you would be apoplectic in your denunciation of them.

I disagree with @noblegiraffe that Rosie Duffield should resign from parliament but I do think she won't win as an independent at the next election and I think she's factored that in. She's ready to leave parliament then. She may also be hoping that Starmer isn't going to last as PM but I think she's probably realised she's burnt her bridges with Labour now. She is apparently a very good constituency MP and I'm sure she will spend the rest of this parliament representing her constituents to the best of her ability.

Plenty abstained, including the MP for my constituency. She votes against, or abstains, his proposals whenever she can.

As an Independent Rosie wil be free to critique Starmer openly in the house.

That's interesting, you think she will lose as an independent but you think it is ok to run as a Labour candidate on that basis and then switch to independent once you have won?

I'm saying that's not ok and she should trigger a by-election and contest it as the independent candidate she clearly always was, giving her constituents an honest election. She knows this is a moral issue because she brushes it off in her letter by presupposing the outcome of that election and saying her constituents would have voted for her anyway.

But she won't let them have an actual say.

Ironically, last year I had an internal job move to a role created for me that my old manager and I had been working towards for a year. I quit after about 3 months because my new manager had very different ideas than my old about the role and somehow they'd either never discussed it properly or assumed I'd not care.

I started with every intention of making it work and threw myself into it. But after three months it was obviously flogging a dead horse so I got myself out of it before I damaged my reputation and frankly my mental health.

Still work for the same company and still have the benefits.

So I don't find it at all suspicious that RD could go into something with good intentions but realise very quickly it was better to get out before it damaged her.

I know you're saying that's not ok because you've said it about twenty times on this thread. I think it is ok. We'll not change each other's minds. It's ok to agree to disagree.

You @-ed me, I thought it polite to respond. 🤷‍♀️

She's said clearly that she hopes that she'll feel able to return to the Labour benches. As her constituents are split very closely Labour/ Conservative 48% and 46%, whichever way she votes she's going to please at least half of them, which is better than most MPs.

This is new from Hannah Barnes in the New Statesman:
https://www.newstatesman.com/thestaggers/2024/09/labour-cannot-afford-to-lose-rosie-duffield

Luciana Berger did similar to Rosie. As a Jewish MP who could no longer tolerate the briefing against her and the hostility towards her in the Labour Party, she left for the Lib Dems. She's now re-joined Labour - but I reckon it could get pretty knife edge again for Jewish members and MPs given the positions and attitudes of many of its other MPs

“Together with former Conservative MP Theo Clarke, Duffield helped catapult the issue of birth trauma into the national consciousness. With Clarke failing to be re-elected and Duffield now out of the mainstream, who will do this going forward?”

Presumably Rosie Duffield, the independent MP?

Or is she actually less useful to people out of Labour than in Labour and her constituents who voted for someone they hoped to be in the party of government might be miffed by no longer having?

I'm talking about people generally......social media primarily.

Although i have to say I'm not entirely clear why you are as bothered as you seem to be - certainly not if you have any sympathy for Rosie's position.

What of those who abstained just weeks after being elected - or who voted against the government at last week's conference?

"Dozens of Labour MPs failed to vote with Prime Minister Keir Starmer in a House of Commons vote on the Government decision to cut winter fuel payments for pensioners just weeks after being elected.

Just one Labour MP, John Trickett, voted against the Government. He faces potentially losing the Labour whip as a result. Fifty three Labour MPs abstained. A Labour source added that a dozen of the abstentions had not been authorised. They stressed that MPs often abstain due to "legitimate" reasons like medical appointments, travel and pairing with the opposition, though
a number of backbenchers who had publicly opposed the policy were given permission to miss the vote, with some saying whips had even encouraged them to find a reason to be absent"

Looking at my notifications for this thread, loads of people are quoting me, at-ing me and generally responding to my posts, quite a few in disagreement.

I came onto the thread and outlined my position. Lots of people engaged with it. I'm responding to them.

It is utterly bizarre that some people think that engaging in a discussion on a single thread on an internet forum translates to being 'really bothered'.

If you want to see what I'm actually 'really bothered' about, check my posting history on the state of schools....there's more than posts on a single thread started by someone else there.

Or is she actually less useful to people out of Labour than in Labour and her constituents who voted for someone they hoped to be in the party of government

The majority of voters voted for someone they hoped to be in the party of government. Most of them were disappointed. Labour only got 33.7% of the vote.

20% of the electorate. Hardly resounding!

So glad she's staying as Indep. Parliament needs as many people like her as it can get. They are few and far between in Westminster.

It was 20 percent of the eligible population. 80 percent of people didn’t vote for them.

Agree. Really pleased she’s staying

Are folks trying to find a way to make Rosie in the wrong. I find this surprising. Much of what the top tier have been up to has come to light since this election.

but more than that, she’s not the issue, starmer is, and raynor, no one should try to deflect from that. From the dishonesty, the greed.

I there was a requirement to have a by-election if an MP left the party they had been a member of, it would tend to undermine the fact that we vote for MPs, not parties.

And that is a really important distinction. Undermining it is another step towards parties being more centrally controlled and MPs having less power to represent their constituents.

Tweet by Jean Hatchet:

https://x.com/JeanHatchet/status/1840692581669216548
‘It’s a fraught landscape out there right now. Women hacking lumps out of each other, for this or that political digression, when we should be pulling together. Please remember too that Rosie Duffield brought “only women have a cervix” right to Starmer’s door and then the UK media made a laughing stock of politician after politician with the question “what is a woman?”. She took up arms on behalf of women - and I think she would have done it whatever party she was in. Because integrity. That’s all we need. Not division but honesty and integrity. Then we can all work together - egos aside. Main character ambitions ditched. The women needing to kick other women into some sort of “pure” shape aren’t useful, they are harmful. We are misfits and rebels. Proudly so. That’s always going to be a messy women’s army. But we CAN be rebels together.’

Insightful response to Jean’s tweet:

https://x.com/PHughes74470229/status/1840705813968540146
‘Perhaps one reason Rosie left is because-at some point acceptance that your mental health has to come first, even before working in the hope of change. She is a survivor and needs no apology for leaving another abusive relationship. Rosie has so much support for her integrity.’

The women needing to kick other women into some sort of “pure” shape aren’t useful, they are harmful.

A few of the regulars on here could learn from this!