(Leon Neal/Getty)
New uniforms, new haircuts and new shoes at the ready, many children went back to school this week (to the ones that aren’t about to crumble around their heads, that is). It was, too, the return of “Hogwarts” — many of us MPs often make the comparison between Parliament and J.K. Rowling’s mysterious, sprawling, magical school full of secrets, wizardry and strange goings-on.
Labour’s class of 2017, of which I am a member, has struggled through the past few years of Brexit legislation, the Corbyn era, our party’s greatest election defeat in history, the shame of both antisemitism and the Forde report, and the virtual-voting lockdown Covid parliament.
We are no longer the new kids. We have graduated to “middle school” and are starting to establish ourselves as members of the Shadow Cabinet, junior prefects, Head Girls and Boys under our current Headmaster. This week, he doled out the Senior School roles first, then the prefects and milk monitors were appointed. Our sports teams were fully filled and kitted out for the start of the new competition season.
It’s always fascinating to watch from the sidelines as this charade plays out.
First comes the not-so-subtle toadying up to teachers (aka lobbying), then the speculation and rumours, followed by the seething rage as current shadow ministers have to endure the humiliating and crude discourtesy of reading another’s appointment to their role via a Labour Party tweet. Watch them quietly boiling away for days, with a rictus grin plastered on as they wait to announce themselves “thrilled” with whatever’s left. Which kind of begs the question: how did they grin and bear the past 10 months or two years as Minister for Endangered Birds if what they really longed for was to be Minister for Ethical Fashion?
As somebody who wandered into this Hogwartian world from an ordinary job, I am a stranger to the dark art of “spin”. I do not come from a long and distinguished line of former wizards working at the Ministry of Magic, I did not get a scholarship here because my friends or family saved me a seat and I did not go to kindergarten with anyone who works in the Headmaster’s office.
So I watch with amusement at those who slotted into the very safest Labour seats — where they replaced disgraced, retiring or fed-up former colleagues — get promoted to the shadow frontbench after a mere handful of appearances in the chamber (of secrets) and without so much as attending even the first lesson in How to Communicate Well With Muggle Voters. Hardly the most obvious possessors of sparkling charisma or subject specialism, they are tweeting their gratitude before even the first chair is installed in their new offices. So what is their secret? What is the magic needed to proceed so effortlessly at such rapid speed?
Rosie Duffield has been almost a lone voice of sanity in the Parliamentary Labour Party these last few years. Not only refusing to concede that 2+2=5, but also having the courage to speak out while so many of her cowardly colleagues kept their heads down.
The fact that the party most likely to form the next government has returned even partially to reason on sex and women’s rights is in large part down to her, a few colleagues and a surprisingly small number of brave women (mostly) outside party politics who have refused to be cowed in public and on social media.
Spot on. Proud of her!
She is a bright light I agree. But she has not drawn the Labour Party away from its infantile but toxic identitarianism. The candle has been parked away in an Islington cellar, surrounded by chanting Corbyny Leftist members, alongside the candles for Remainia, Wealth Tax Class Envy and all the Eco Lunacy ideas Keir has supposedly ditched. He is just doing a Biden…hide in a hole, say nothing bar – I am not Him/Them. It is still a braindead role free Zombie Party. The Fool Boris has stolen all their core socialist ideological clothes. But look out. It is not just Leftie Zealots who want aggressive Wokery. Others hold that same set of candles openly. The weird Yellow Bird ones. A Labour led coalition is a real possibility…Keir will get battered in the election campaign but still scrape home. So it is the super cynical super deranged Lib Dems – pro open border mass migration but ultra Nimby on actually accomodating the extra 10 million – are very likely to profit. Watch out. Khan and the SNP are the canaries. We are destined for more aggressive identitarianism more culture war more class war and oppressive progressive abuse, no matter what these limp heated up draped in flag Neo Blairites say.
An eloquently humorous response that unfortunately could be the likely result. Best case scenario; A conservative government (deliberate small ‘c’) propped-up by the Reform Party!
Hear hear. Well done Rosie Duffield.
Very interesting article. Rosie Duffield was one of the very few MP’s who had the courage to point out that biological reality determines what happens in reality, not “gendered souls” or unicorns or any other twaddle.
The way she was treated by her party was an utter disgrace but unfortunately for them, she doesn’t fold under pressure. They’d do well to listen to her on gender ideology, given that she’s only pointing out what the vast majority of voters with functioning frontal lobes, understand to be true.
The hold of gender ideology is still very strong, with reports of Sunak allegedly planning to block the ban on schoolchildren “socially transitioning” without parental approval. We’ll need a lot more Rosie Duffields before the cult of gendered souls calls it a day.
Well done. I would say to anyone reading this that you don’t have to share Rosie Duffield’s politics to admire her courage. She is, or at least appears to be, a very rare example of an independently-minded Labour MP who appears to care more about truth than power. Once upon a time there may have been more like her, on both sides of the house, but she appears today to be a lonely representative in parliament of people who are willing to say what they actually think – a large, albeit “marginalised”, group if ever there was one.
I hope she keeps her seat and stays true to her word of calling out the Emperor with no clothes if and when he buys into untruthful narratives spun by the highest grand wizards of New York and Geneva about the need for extraordinary, urgent, liberty-crushing measures to combat whatever the latest global crisis happens to be. If she can’t give the crustacean Starmer a spine, she can at least demonstrate to him and his sycophantic power-hungry fan club what one looks like.
Entertaining and excoriating writing. A brave and independent voice is so rare today in Parliament.
Good for you, Rosie, keep up your excellent work. This is what folk in the corporate world euphemistically call a “brave” move, so expect retaliation. Next time, please avoid extended metaphors, though – I’ve never read any Rowling (though I’ve a funny feeling I know why you chose her …)
I’ve never read any Harry Potter either, but the extended metaphor works for me and lifts the article above the merely mundane.
Ah, the joys of opposition, where MPs are required to do nothing more except look good, sound good and be slavishly loyal to the Party Line.
This time next year, they will almost certainly need to be something else. Competent. Who will survive then, especially as Labour is clueless about solving our problems?
I look forward to Rosie’s sardonic observations then.
You should certainly be proud of your achievements, Rosie. You are an honest and brave politician, and I wish there were more like you in the House of Commons in both parties.
It was never the cool kids who succeeded in the end. X
Yes, but that is fiction. In the real world though …
A lone voice of sanity in the sea of Labour’s craziness. Rosie is one of the few MPs (of any party) I have any respect for. I may not agree with her on many matters, but I do admire her conviction and level-headedness.
Rather wonderful really. Politicians often make more sense when speaking from outside or beyond the sphere of the party machine. Rosie took advantage of the opportunity presented by being sidelined, to not hide away but to speak out. It’s said we get the politicians we deserve. I only wish we ‘deserved’ more Rosie Duffields.
I know I waffle on about this stuff on and on, to the point of tedium, but pretty much all of what Starmer & co are saying now in preparation for entering government will be an irrelevance in his time in Office, and over the rest of the twenties. This is because neither the government nor the oppo parties want to talk about the sheer scale of change and disruption about to engulf us all, pretty much imminently, because of rapid and accelerating recent advances in AI.
My point is, government is by definition full of people better informed than most, and Starmer is a lawyer, a profession whose denizens are known for their ability to grasp the salient facts of entirely unfamiliar domains at speed, assess consequences of trajectories, and encompass them in responses, but what shocks me here today is that no one from any party appears to have any sort of of response at all that they are communicating with any kind of urgency to us the public about incoming AI change, which is going to happen very very fast. I mean by this, either tecchie types like me are completely wrong, and AI change will roll in at much slower/normal speeds, or we have already entered the eye of the whirlwind, because what is coming out of the AI labs is so different, it is going to cause instant upheaval everywhere. Because you don’t have to buy into existential-threat-doomer arguments to see that what’s already here and what’s coming is going to cause immediate turmoil across employment, education, war, markets, business etc on a scale and at a speed not ever seen before. And I suspect the politicos don’t talk about it, not because many of them can’t see what is happening, but because they are like rabbits caught in the headlights – they don’t know how to react and don’t have the language for a response that is remotely cogent because this is not stuff any of them have familiarity with. They will instead therefore revert to shouting out standard left vs right, woke vs trad, dingdong inanities as a retreat to political comfort zones, even while AI change is pulling the rug from under their feet, Starmer included.
What I am very awkwardly trying to convey, is if you are about to be steamrolled by new technologies, and there is no way to control the consequences of those technologies (and to be clear, there isn’t), then it doesn’t really matter if you are left, right, or centerist dad, or if your ruling party is old left, progressive left, Cameronian right, Thatcherite right, Corbynite left etc – you get steamrolled just the same.
In lieu, I’m inventing a new name for our tumultuous decade – ‘The Turmoil Twenties’.
You heard it here first.
There seems to be a general ‘head-in-the-sand’ attitude to the AI situation. This sums it up & it’s terrifying.
From the sound of it there’s nothing we can do to stop it – there are people in that world who want to progress it, just because they can. And who believe that a thing that can be done, must be done.
I spent over 30 years in IT and last 15 in computer security.
I am not an expert on AI but have decent grasp of ideas and technologies.
Your point of view is on dramatic end of the spectrum.
There are many other serious players in this field who say that AI will cause profound changes to our lifes but not as quickly as you claim.
If you recall, Elon Musk and others claimed that we would have self driving cars already in general use by 2020.
It is unlikely to happen before 2030 (as mass market and not isolated deployment in few cities).
But clearly you are right that many jobs will disappear (Uber drivers anyone?).
So current and future governments in the West are plainly mad to import masses of low IQ people to do jobs which will not exist.
I can only pray you are right and I am wrong. I am aware this sounds ludicrous but everything I’m seeing says the world looks very different in as little as two years because of the large language models. Five years and unrecognisable.
Brave, beautiful and she can write.
Brava, Rosie.
I’ve come to like her even if she was probably elected by double voting students who wanted Corbyn. This will probably ensure she’s deselected because this sounds like the SNP’s playbook. Or is it Animal Farm?
I like her but with so many students voters in her constituency, surely candidate with woke views is preferable to Labour Party.
Especially if Conservatives deploy Boris as “Priscillia Queen of the desert” with his mad net zero lady in tow?
Well written, loved the Harry Potter stuff, and, more importantly, well done! A beacon of reality in the smog of modern politics.
Rosie should enter this for the Hogwarts Essay Prize.
How the Lab leadership appears to have treated Rosie regarding her views on Trans etc of considerable disappointment. One suspects the position evolving, but doesn’t excuse.
Obviously context for her understandable swipe back.
One of the good ones…
If only there were an UnHerd Party to vote for. Headed by Rosie Duffield of course.
In equal headship with Doc Stock, Mary Harrington, Kat Rosenfield, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Lionel Shriver… For the ladies team anyway..
I see Starmer’s Labour as fundamentally a party of bad faith which they have the freedom to be given the enormous anti-Tory voting phenomenon ahead after 13 years of power. The bad faith is basically built on their future European (federal) economic ambitions which I’m sure for most of their supporters would extend to having another go at the euro. Old Labour voters are something different, of course, but even in the famous Red Wall many switched to Tory just to get the EU exit treaty settled.
Love the Harry Potter references and continue to admire your courageous stance.
Come on Rosie. You’ve been an inspiration, but don’t give way to public bitterness, it’ll eat you up.
I chuckled from start to finish.
Yep, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is back in charge!
Labour might even win an election…
Well done Rosie! A beacon of Muggle common sense in a sea of stupidness – in all 3 main parties. Keep it up!
Thanks Rosie.
Having been a member of two of the big parties it’s quite strange how easy they are to spot from a distance.
Labour – drives to meetings (spends hours complaining about parking) before vote on greening the borough or air quality, body the shape of a Russell Hobbs toaster – gender hard to determine – wheezy on account of undiagnosed condition
Liberal – skittish, birdlike, seems to under the influence of a substance undefinable but somewhere between a William Morris wallprint and crystal meth. Very hard to pin down on anything
Tory – sweaty bottomed, bad haircut, probable photo somewhere in the archives showing him in an SS uniform at the council chambers.
Ideological ones prone to bow ties & look like they’ve escaped from the School of Economic Science cult (founded by a Labour MP weirdly)
The women tend toward Indian background, electric blue frocks, and psychopathy.
I am amazed that no one upvoted you.
I guess your descriptions are quite accurate.
Right, where are my leadherhosen?
Rosie’s wit is wasted in politics – well, wasted on the wicked wizards and witches. The good honest voting muggles are thrilled to see a politician prepared to poke clever fun at the king and queen makers wearing nothing but rainbows. A brilliant essay that made my day on the other side of the world where we could sorely do with a Rosie – though we will soon have a Posie, if only briefly – standing up to the pronoun politicians and their police.
2019 was not “our party’s greatest election defeat in history”, in spite of the party establishment working to undermine Corbyn since 2015.
The “shame of antisemitism” was that the issue was used as a weapon to bring down Corbyn. “The shame of the Forde report” was that it was long suppressed by Starmer because it exposed this weaponisation. #ItWasAScam
Which kind of begs the question: how did they grin and bear the past 10 months or two years as Minister for Endangered Birds if what they really longed for was to be Minister for Ethical Fashion?
I was going to say that your government has too many ministers and they all ought to be sacked, but a quick Google search reveals there is no “Minister for Ethical Fashion”. So that’s a relief.
No, you know what? I’m going to go with my initial impulse. Your government has too many ministers and they all ought to be sacked.
The Labour Party is in opposition and therefore does not include any ministers.
Er, she’s not in government…
what a pointless article.
Disgruntled employee. Ideas above herself. Ignore.
I imagine she’ll join her tory buddies next year. On the opposition benches. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Top trolling. Keep it up.