Rosie Duffield MP quits Labour with blast at Keir Starmer's gifts from donor

Rosie Duffield will sit as an independent after quitting the party she "loves" - and used her resignation letter to attack Keir Starmer over gifts he and his wife received from Lord Alli.

Rosie Duffield has quit as a Labour MP, giving up the party whip "with immediate effect".

In her resignation letter she attacked Keir Starmer over gifts he and his wife received from Lord Alli.

She wrote: “Someone with far-above-average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives’ two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of these people can grasp — this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour prime minister.”

She added: “Forcing a vote [on the winter fuel payment] to make many older people iller and colder while you and your favourite colleagues enjoy free family trips to events most people would have to save hard for — why are you not showing even the slightest bit of embarrassment?”

It's understood Ms Duffield will now sit as an independent.

She has long been seen as an outsider in the party over her views on trans issues and her friendship with JK Rowling.

“With my [gender critical] views, all I wanted was for those views to be taken seriously and discussed and I think as a movement the Labour Party has shifted and we are talking about those things now,” she said in an interview with the Times.

“I and others put it on the agenda by basically being very loud about women’s rights and I am glad it is now a mainstream discussion, but that’s not why I am leaving the Labour Party. The Labour Party has left me.”

In her resignation letter she said Labour is her "natural home" and hopes to return in the future.

“The Labour Party was formed to speak for those of us without a voice, and I stood for election partly because I saw decisions about the lives of those like me being made in Westminster by only the most privileged few. Right now, I cannot look my constituents in the eye and tell them that anything has changed,” she wrotre.

“I hope to be able to return to the party in the future, when it again resembles the party I love, putting the needs of the many before the greed of the few.”

No10 declined to comment.