Rosie Duffield has resigned as Labour whip – but what was she saying before she did?
Disgraced Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield has resigned from her position as Labour whip after her breaches of lock-down to visit a lover were revealed in the press. Duffield was protected from a vote of censure by Canterbury Labour members in 2018, who were unhappy at her conduct then.
But only a few days before her exposure and resignation, Duffield was vocal in criticising Dominic Cummings’s ludicrous journeys of hundreds of miles around the country during the lock-down period:
It’s not the first time Ms Duffield has been caught out. Last year she was quick to publicly criticise Laura Pidcock for supposedly dodging questions about antisemitism during an interview – and failed to publicly apologise when it emerged that Pidcock had answered questions, but the responses had been edited out by the former Tory staffer who released the video.
Does Duffield’s hypocrisy explain party leader Keir Starmer’s weakness and apparent orders to his front bench to dodge any call for Cummings to resign for his lock-down breaches?
If so, he would have been far better showing some leadership by sacking her directly and then speaking out, than continuing a so-far drably-consistent track record of hiding from the issue.
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