Mick Hartley

Having been shouted down by male Labour MPs as she spoke out about the dangers of Scotland's gender ID bill to women's safety, Rosie Duffield now reflects on the state of the party at UnHerd.

The Labour Party has a woman problem.

Domestic abuse is about control and power and silencing someone. It can take many forms. A text. A glance. A threat disguised as a promise. The idea is to manipulate you; to paralyse you.

I have lived through an abusive relationship and have spoken about it in Parliament. I was reminded of making that speech earlier this week — the daily trauma that inspired it, how hard it was to make and, afterwards, the overwhelming support of my colleagues. That was the Labour Party I joined.

On Tuesday, when two of those colleagues traded that sympathy for aggression, shouting down women in the Chamber, it felt like a very different Labour Party. I was defending the need to protect vulnerable women in single-sex spaces, and had just criticised Scotland’s Gender Reform Bill, when Ben Bradshaw yelled his disapproval at me. Sitting nearby, Lloyd Russell-Moyle went puce — perhaps less surprising — and started to heckle every woman who spoke of their similar concerns. Later, when Miriam Cates, a Conservative MP and friend, spoke of her concerns around safeguarding, he accused her of being a bigot before crossing over to the Tory side of the Chamber to sit on the side benches, very close to her, staring as if to intimidate her.

“I recognise that I failed to control [my] passion”, was how he later “apologised”. In other words, he had done nothing wrong. It wasn’t his fault; it was ours for daring to disagree with him. “Look what you made me do,” as my ex-partner would say when I had caused him to explode — perhaps by doing or wearing something he didn’t entirely like or voicing an opinion he didn’t want to hear.

After Tuesday’s outburst, came the silence. Not from Russell-Moyle, but from Keir Starmer’s office. It’s a cycle I’ve come to know well. First, speak up in defence of women’s sex-based rights. And then, face the consequences. Alone.

It's a debate the Labour Party wishes would go away. They want to be seen as progressive, and trans ideology presents itself as the latest progressive step forward. Far from being progressive, though, it uses the language of gay liberation to conceal a homophobic and misogynistic program. Unfortunately Labour members are either too dim to see this, or too frightened of the backlash from the ideologues to speak up. 

I know I’m not the only MP in the party who thinks this — I’m just the only one who feels I have nothing to lose by speaking out. After all, there’s no front-bench job offer for the only Labour MP in my county. Many of us know that self-identifying as a woman does not make a person a biological woman who shares our lived experience. But for obvious reasons, these views are not voiced outside of closed rooms or private and secret WhatsApp groups. Even there, the most senior MPs often do not post a single word; they know exactly what’s at stake and not many of them want to be me. So for now, they mostly remain silent….

Is it starting to look like Labour has a women problem? It certainly is for the 7,000-strong group of women members, councillors and activists who make up Labour Women’s Declaration and had a stall at last year’s party conference refused. It is for Lesbian Labour, who were also stopped from exhibiting at last year’s conference. It is for Dr Karen Ingala-Smith, the formidable feminist campaigner who compiles a list of women killed in the UK each year which is then read out in Parliament by Jess Philips every International Women’s Day, and who had her membership rejected after she made a few gender-critical joke tweets featuring kittens. And of course it is for me, ostracised for voicing not only my own opinions but those of thousands of others who are starting to question the Party they have dedicated so much of their lives to.

In each case, a woman who dared to voice an opinion was ignored or neglected. One of the traits of being in an abusive relationship is “stonewalling”. The abuser will go quiet for days on end. They will stew, not speak to you, turn their back on you. Trust me when I say I don’t take this lightly: but what I feel now, after six years of being cold-shouldered by the Labour Party, conjures memories of how I felt in that abusive relationship….

In 2019, it was hard enough trying to convince my constituents that Labour wasn’t antisemitic. In the next election, when they inevitably ask whether Labour is sexist, I’m not sure I’ll be able to do the same.