UK PM Keir Starmer suffers first leadership setback as party MP resigns

LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has suffered his first setback since taking charge at 10 Downing Street in July after one of his members of Parliament resigned from the Labour Party, delivering a scathing attack on his leadership.

Rosie Duffield, MP for Canterbury in Kent, will now sit in the House of Commons as an Independent after her resignation letter published in ‘The Sunday Times’ attacked the Labour leader’s “cruel and unnecessary” policies amid an ongoing expensive free gifts row.

Duffield claimed there were many "last straws" that led to her decision to resign, but her main reason to step down this weekend is over the government’s programme of unpopular policies.

“They are cruel and unnecessary and affect hundreds of thousands of our poorest, most vulnerable constituents. This is not what I was elected to do. It is not even wise politics, and it certainly is not ‘the politics of service’,” writes Duffield in her resignation letter.

The MP goes on to state that she has no confidence in the Labour PM’s commitment to deliver the “so-called change” he promised during the general election campaign and that she could not look her “constituents in the eye and tell them that anything has changed”.

Delivering a more personal broadside on Starmer, she added: “As Prime Minister, your managerial and technocratic approach and lack of basic politics and political instincts, have come crashing down on us as a party after we worked so hard, promised so much, and waited a long fourteen years to be mandated by the British public to return to power.

“Since the change of government in July, 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.

“How dare you take our longed-for victory, the electorate's sacred and precious trust, and throw it back in their individual faces and the faces of dedicated and hardworking Labour MPs?! The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale. I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party.”

Responding to Duffield’s resignation, Indian-origin Labour MP for Nottingham East Nadia Whittome said: "It is deeply disappointing that she has been allowed the privilege of resigning, as she should have lost the whip a long time ago.”

It alludes to Duffield’s previous clashes with Labour’s senior figures, especially over her views on transgender issues and speaking out for protected spaces for women and against people being able to self-identify as trans to gain access to those spaces.

The resignation follows revelations around Starmer having received GBP 107,145 in gifts, benefits, and hospitality, a specific category in the UK Parliament's register of MPs' interests.

Several of his Cabinet members have also come under pressure over accepting expensive gifts from donors, including Lord Waheed Alli – a Labour peer of Indo-Trinidadian-Guyanese heritage and the party's key fundraiser.

While these were all declared as per the UK parliamentary rules, it has generated widespread commentary around the influence such gifts could generate for the donors. Downing Street has since indicated that the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers would no longer be accepting expenses towards clothing.