A bit like the little boy in the old fairytale of the Emperor's new clothes who points out the ruler is naked, sometimes someone says what everyone else is thinking but is too scared to express. Rosie Duffield’s castigating letter to Sir Keir Starmer certainly falls into this category as she surgically dismembered a dreadful first 10 weeks in government for this new Labour government with almost brutal glee. Critics of the Canterbury MP - and there are many - will point out that she has been an outlier in the party for several years now.
Sitting on its fringes after her attacks on trans rights and support for figures like J.K. Rowling made her a heroine to some and a bigoted villain to others.
Starmer was always in the latter camp on that debate. There were constant rumours that Duffield might switch to the Tories . Certainly she was wooed but she never did and it was always dismissed as another attempt to poison her reputation.
In her resignation letter she emphasises her union roots, her belief in social democratic politics and questions whether Starmer himself is more akin to Tory thinking. It is absolutely fair to say that when she ran for Labour in July, she did so not exactly as a supporter of Starmer or what he stands for. However, anyone who feels the need to pile into Duffield now because they want to defend Starmer should ask themselves this question: What would I say if this was a Tory MP resigning the whip because of the actions of a Tory government? If you did .