Rosie Duffield with dog Paco (Image: Getty)
Rosie Duffield has been one the most outspoken critics in recent weeks of the Government’s decision to means-test winter fuel payments, taking the benefit from nearly ten million pensioners.
But she’s only been saying in public what many other Labour MPs were saying in private.
And she’s not one of the “usual suspects” – the left-wing MPs who backed Jeremy Corbyn and are angry at Sir for moving Labour back towards the centre ground. In fact, she was one of Mr Corbyn’s critics and accused him of failing to fight anti-semitism in the party.
So her decision to resign as a Labour MP, and to launch a devastating attack on Sir Keir, is particularly damaging.
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In her bombshell resignation letter accused the Prime Minister of presiding over “sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice”.
The Canterbury MP, aged 53, told the Prime Minister: “I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party.”
She condemned Sir Keir for means-testing winter fuel payments and keeping the two-child benefit cap “while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of those people can grasp – this is entirely unbecoming of holding the title of Prime Minister.”
And she said: “The revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous. I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear.”
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Ms Duffield is a former primary school teaching assistant who was first elected as an MP in 2017. She has served as chair of the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party and was a Labour whip – appointed by Sir Keir – in 2020. She resigned from this role after admitting breaking lockdown rules by meeting her husband. Even though the pair were married they were living in separate households which was a breach of the rules at the time.
The dog-loving MP last year entered pet pooch Paco in the Westminster Dog of the Year contest.
Although she has quit as a Labour MP she remains in the House of Commons as an independent.