Rosie Duffield on Starmer, in the Times:
When she was bombarded with death threats online and ostracised by her Labour colleagues after agreeing with the view that individuals with a cervix should be described as women, Rosie Duffield just wanted a bit of help from her party leader.
“I would have really liked to have had just a short statement basically calling the dogs off, saying that I had Keir Starmer’s backing, that he supported me as an MP,” she says. “But I didn’t ever have that. And I was told very clearly by an adviser that was something he would never do.”
Instead she was “treated like a pariah”, faced a disciplinary investigation by Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) and ultimately felt hounded out of the party.
Now, following the landmark Supreme Court ruling that sex in the Equality Act refers to biology, the prime minister has finally asserted that a “woman is an adult female” but has resisted calls to apologise to Duffield for her treatment.
She is not interested. “I don’t really feel like I need that. And it wouldn’t be a sincere apology. Keir comes across as not exactly human, not exactly involved in this and not empathetic and not understanding the issue.
“Sentiment can be written by someone else for you to say. Proper, deep-rooted understanding and empathy? That’s something you can’t manufacture, and that is very lacking in him when talking about this.”
Very lacking in him when talking about anything. He doesn't do sincerity, only that robotic "sincerity". By no means the only politician that's true of, for sure, but still...
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, failed to call on Duffield to speak during PMQs. She wanted to ask the prime minister for an apology over Labour activists and members who had been sidelined and disciplined for offering pro-women views.
It's been suggested, plausibly, that this was deliberate. Hoyle and Starmer are old pals.
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