Gender critical Labour candidate Rosie Duffield has announced she has withdrawn from hustings events because constant abuse and harassment from trolls and “fixated individuals” have made her fear for her safety (Telegraph, Times).
In a statement on Friday evening, posted on X, Ms Duffield, who is running again to be MP for Canterbury, said her attendance at the events was “impossible” because of the actions of a “few fixated individuals”, who had pursued their “spite and misrepresentation” with “a new vigour” during the election campaign.
She added: “Since the start of this campaign, myself and many other candidates have had to be mindful of our own safety and the safety of our campaign teams. I’ve had to spend time and money on personal security. This has a very real effect on democracy and MPs should be able to meet with and talk to all of their constituents, particularly during an election period.
“I hope the other candidates feel able to enjoy what will be for most their first hustings experience, that is free from abuse and interruption, and I will no doubt see them during the rest of the campaign,” she continued. “I will be holding several secure local events in the coming weeks so that constituents can indeed put their questions to me.”
In an X post since reposted by Ms Duffield, one X user said: “I’m at the hustings that Rosie was forced to absent herself from. When her apology was read out there was immediate toxic & personal yelling/argy bargy from people only attending to derail proceedings. She made the right decision which allowed other candidates to be heard.”
When another X user scoffed at the suggestion Ms Duffield’s safety was at risk and claimed she was simply running scared of the electorate, JK Rowling stepped in to defend her close friend, writing: “When you’ve had years of death and rape threats, physical intimidation, the necessity of hiring your own personal security and a total absence of support from your part, you can show us all what bravery looks like. A lesser woman wouldn’t still be fighting. Oh, and get to f*** [a technical novelist’s term].”
As JK Rowling suggests, Ms Duffield is no stranger to the worst excesses of the trans rights movement, which regards any attempt to argue that trans rights should not automatically take precedence over women’s sex-based rights in every social setting as ‘transphobic’.
Since becoming Canterbury’s first Labour MP for 99 years in 2017, LGBT Labour have constantly complained about her ‘transphobia’. In 2022, she considered leaving the party after “obsessive harassment” from current and former party members. Last month, an internet troll was given an eight-week suspended sentence for sending chilling messages threatening to shoot Ms Duffield, and for sending JK Rowling an audio message in which he said he was going to kill her with a hammer.
Earlier this week, Ms Duffield also revealed that she has been forced to spend £2,000 on bodyguards since the start of the general election campaign.
Following the release of Ms Duffield’s statement, Labour’s Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner was asked during an interview whether the party had shown its candidate for the Canterbury constituency enough support. “I hope so,” she responded. “Rosie’s valued as a member of our parliamentary Labour party but as I say, I think there should be no violence or intimidation to any candidates through our election process because that damages us all.”
However, many commentators have since taken to Twitter to question why senior figures in the Labour Party have not done more to support their beleaguered Parliamentary candidate.
Over the past few years, Ms Duffield has been one of the party’s most prominent gender critical parliamentarians. The fact she has repeatedly stuck up for biological reality and warned of the dangers of allowing males who self-identity as women to access single-sex spaces, such as school toilets, rape crisis centres, and women’s prisons, has put her at odds with the party’s trans-friendly shadow cabinet.
Last month, Ms Duffield revealed that Sir Keir Starmer offered “no apology” when the two finally spoke after she told a party whip she had not been talked to by her leader in two-and-a-half years. “Natalie Elphicke [the former Conservative MP who recently defected to Labour] was welcomed with open arms,” she said. “I got 17 minutes and still no apology for being briefed against by head of comms.”
The reference to briefings against her relates to the fallout from a Commons debate on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill in 2023, when Duffield was heckled by her party’s own male backbenchers.
Having welcomed the Government’s move to make an order under section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 preventing the Bill – which would cut the time it takes to legally change your gender, lower the age at which you can do it to 16 and eliminate the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria – from proceeding to Royal Assent, she went on to ask the then Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack, whether he “recognised the strength of feeling among women and women’s rights groups and activists in Scotland that this Bill seeks to allow anyone at all to legally self-identify as either sex and, therefore, enter all spaces, including those necessarily segregated by sex, such as domestic violence settings, changing rooms and prisons?”
Writing in the Times, Jawad Iqbal described what Ms Duffield had to endure while asking this question as “appalling bullying” – and Parliament TV’s clip of her speech makes for uncomfortable viewing.
As soon as Ms Duffield gets to her feet, the atmosphere turns nasty. Clearly uncomfortable, she struggles throughout to be heard over the abuse directed at her from her own benches. Just out of shot, Lloyd Russell-Moyle can be heard working himself into a spittle-flecked rage, barracking Ms Duffield throughout, while former minister Ben Bradshaw shouts “absolute rubbish” just as she’s defending the need for traumatised female victims of male-perpetrated violence to have access to spaces that are segregated by sex.
Following the debate, audio emerged of Matthew Doyle, a senior aide to Labour Party leader Sir Keir, briefing against Ms Duffield. Mr Doyle was caught on tape dismissing the MP as “irritating” and “disingenuous” and suggesting it might be helpful if she “spen[t] a bit more time in Canterbury [i.e., her constituency]” rather than “hanging out with JK Rowling”.
In an excoriating interview with the Express two months later, Ms Duffield criticised the party for its “absolute lack of support”, claimed it had been “captured” by powerful campaign groups like LGBT Labour, but insisted she wouldn’t let “a handful of people in a very small clique… hound me out”.
