A senior government minister was forced to look on awkwardly as a Labour MP who dramatically quit the party launched an outspoken attack on Keir Starmer’s government.
Rosie Duffield stunned Westminster on Saturday night by announcing that she was resigning less than three months after the general election.
She blamed Keir Starmer’s “cruel and unnecessary” policies as well as the freebies row which has engulfed the prime minister in recent weeks.
On Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on BBC1, Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden was shown in the studio watching a pre-recorded interview with Duffield, who was elected MP for Canterbury in 2017.
She said: “I’m ashamed of the fact that we stood up, rightly, and condemned all of the last few years of what we saw as Tory sleaze and all of the things that brought politics into disrepute.
“We’ve always held ourselves up as a party that will do better, that will clear out the rot, and here we are, it’s daily revelations of hypocrisy and grubby presents. I can’t believe what I’m reading every single day.
“All of us had donations for the election. I didn’t like it, but I had to crowdfund because I got very little money from unions and the party this time, and you feel a bit grubby doing that. But I had some lovely friends and some generous donations myself for leaflets and things.
“But when you’ve got people with so much more money than the average person spending somebody’s yearly salary on their own clothes without feeling that they have to apologise or explain, I just feel like I’m not getting anywhere with trying to get that from my leader, and I needed to go.”
She added: “It’s greed. Why else would someone on so much more money than most people take free gifts? Why? He can absolutely afford his own clothes, we all can.
“I haven’t seen anything that explains why that’s OK. And then to see us cutting the money to people who earn a fraction of what we do, it’s mass hypocrisy and I can’t be a part of that.”
The MP said Starmer’s government was “more about greed and power than making a difference, and I can’t take it any more”.
Asked if Starmer had “a problem with women”, Duffield replied: “I’m afraid I do. I’ve experienced it myself. Most backbenchers that I’m friends with are women, most of us refer to the young men who surround him as ‘the lads’, and it’s very clear that the lads are in charge.”
Responding to her attack, Pat McFadden said she had been “disillusioned with the party leader” for a long time.
He said: “I don’t think this is something that just developed in the last few months.
“I’m disappointed to see her go. I like Rosie, but ultimately I’m not surprised at the decision that she has made.”
Asked if he was one of the “lads” around the PM, McFadden said: “I think I’m a bit too old to be a lad.
“Some of the stuff in [Duffield’s resignation] letter I just don’t accept.
“I see ministers turning up to work every day and what’s on their mind is how to stabilise the economy and get it growing again, how to turn around the NHS, how to get more houses built, how to improve rights at work for people, how to get more opportunity into schools.
“That’s what the ministers around that Cabinet table are focused on. They believe in public service.”