Labour Party officials ‘investigating’ MP Rosie Duffield over ‘complaints of transphobia’
Labour party officials are reportedly investigating Rosie Duffield for liking a transphobic tweet. (Getty)
Rosie Duffield is “under investigation” by Labour Party officials for allegedly transphobic social media activity.
The Canterbury MP liked a tweet by Kurtis Tripp, a gay man who was previously arrested on terrorism charges, saying that trans people are “mostly heterosexuals cosplaying as the opposite sex”.
Tripp’s tweet also demanded trans people “stop co-opting our language” and “stop colonising gay culture”.
Duffield, 50, is now being investigated by Labour Party officials, according to The Times and The Daily Mail. It is now almost a year since Duffield was first criticised by LGBT+ Labour Party members for making anti-trans comments online.
LGBT+ Labour this week (27 July) called for Duffield to lose the whip and for Keir Starmer to suspend her from the party for what it calls a “consistent pattern” of “LGBT-phobic behaviour”.
This includes a “recent endorsement” of “extremely homophobic and transphobic comments” by Duffield on social media, LGBT+ Labour said.
“We have been concerned with the transphobic interactions on Rosie Duffield’s social media profiles for over a year,” said Alex Beverley, chair of LGBT+ Labour, in a statement yesterday (27 July).
“During that time, we have tried to constructively engage with her and have repeatedly called on the leadership to take clear and decisive action.
“We feel we have exhausted all other options and now must publicly call for the whip to be removed from Rosie Duffield and for her to be suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party,” Beverley said.
Rosie Duffield denies being transphobic
Rosie Duffield has been plagued by allegations of transphobia since August 2020, when she insisted that “only women have a cervix” and then branded the backlash against her comments a “tedious Communist pile-on“.
Duffield spent the next 10 days liking transphobic tweets, for which she was heavily criticised by LGBT+ Labour party members, before issuing an apology insisting that she had “always” supported trans rights and had been “hurt greatly” by the accusations of transphobia levelled against her.
But two of her own staffers, one a lesbian and the other an LGBT+ ally, then quit Duffield’s office citing the MP’s “overtly transphobic” views.
After the second woman resigned, Duffield outed her on Twitter – leading to the trade union for MP’s staff condemning Duffield for “abusing her position” and calling for the Labour Party to immediately launch a formal investigation.
A Labour Party spokesperson told The Times: “The Labour Party takes all complaints of homophobia or transphobia extremely seriously, which are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures.”
PinkNews has contacted the Labour Party and Rosie Duffield for comment.
