The MP isn’t alone in complaining about the PM’s inner circle, party donations or welfare reform. Labour should treat this as a warning

Rosie Duffield never dreamed, she insists, that she would end up leaving the Labour party. And how lucky for her, in some ways, if she genuinely didn’t see this near inevitable breach coming; not even, presumably, after she accused Keir Starmer dramatically in June of “gaslighting” her like an abusive partner. For who could have stood in good conscience on a Labour ticket, in the year of a widely predicted Labour landslide, if they had suspected that barely three months after winning they’d be off? “Sometimes I feel completely independent,” she told an interviewer in June. But if she’d guessed that by September she would be sitting as one, then surely the only honourable action would have been to fight (and almost certainly lose) her Canterbury seat as an independent candidate. Lucky for Duffield, then, that she seemingly realised only after securing another term in parliament that it was time to go.

But Starmer has arguably been lucky too. Her eye-wateringly savage resignation letter – accusing him of presiding over “sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice … off the scale”, as well as the “cruel and unnecessary” means testing of winter fuel payments – could have done far more damage had it come from someone less isolated within the party. On the left, many who share her doubts about welfare reform still don’t want to hear it from the MP famous for liking a tweet that stated only women can have a cervix. (Though Duffield swears she isn’t quitting over it, three years of being ostracised and attacked for her gender critical views, only to see Starmer eventually come around to something closer to her position, have clearly left their mark).

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist