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Conservative Conference: Jeremy Hunt says the Tories can’t expect voters to return ‘automatically’

Conservative Conference: Jeremy Hunt says the Tories can’t expect voters to return ‘automatically’

Why did Rosie Duffield leave Labor?

Damian Grammaticas
Political correspondent

Voters, activists and MPs are laughed at – Rosie Duffield

In the pre-recorded interview with Laura Kuenssberg – which we’ll be watching in full shortly – Rosie Duffield says Keir Starmer’s team is “more about greed and power than about making a difference”.

This is far from the first time Duffield has criticized Starmer. And it’s not the first time she has considered leaving Labour.

Her time as an MP since 2017 has seen public disagreements between her, some in her local party and the Labor leadership – both Sir Keir and Jeremy Corbyn before him.

In 2021, she said she would not attend the Labor conference because she had received threats over her stance on women’s rights and her views on gender self-identification.

Speaking to the BBC in 2022, Duffield stated that she felt snubbed by Sir Keir. “He doesn’t seem particularly interested in talking to me,” she said.

Earlier this year, Duffield was cleared by the party’s board after several internal complaints were made against her for anti-Semitism and transphobia. She “vigorously” denied the claims and said she had been “completely exonerated”.

At the beginning of her time as an MP there were also other attacks on her within the party.

In 2018, when Corbyn was party leader, she took part in a rally against anti-Semitism. She said she wanted to show solidarity with Jewish colleagues, some of whom had been “systematically mistreated” and threatened.

Local party members tried to reprimand her, but then relented when MPs rallied around a new colleague. Duffield said she believed some local members mistakenly thought she was trying to campaign against Jeremy Corbyn.

Two years ago she told the BBC: “We had to deal with the problem of anti-Semitism, which was huge and terrible, and I had no support from the leader at the time and there was an awful lot of abuse.”

However, she said she believes things are improving and she is no longer considering quitting the party.

That has now changed.