If he passes his hated welfare reform bill today, albeit at the price of a $3 billion concession to backbench rebels and most of his credibility, Starmer will doubtless breathe a sigh of relief. He would be foolish, though, to think he is in the clear. More than 120 furious Labour MPs spurned his authority last week. And even if, after a bit of flattery and soft-bullying, most of them end up holding their noses and voting for the bastardized bill, their resentment will continue to simmer. (Trust me, I know the feeling.)

Obviously, I’m voting against — as are many of my sidelined former colleagues in the Labour Party: “veteran” MPs who survived the brutal 2019 election and who know, having spent time in their constituencies, that Labour voters don’t want to axe disability benefits. I’m talking about Rachael Maskell, Richard Burgon, Emma Lewell — all really astute politicians, with strong majorities, who nevertheless are consistently ignored. (None of them stood a chance of making it into this Cabinet, packed with politicians in Starmer’s own image: centrists and loyalists — not a Left-winger in sight.) Let’s not forget that even in its diluted form, the bill will still drag an additional 150,000 Britons into poverty. Any party that stands for that is surely not a Labour Party.

I am curious, however, as to how the newest intake of MPs will vote. In the past, these well-meaning Starmer loyalists — the Starmtroopers — have, understandably, been too timid to rebel, even against policies that could have been plucked straight from a Conservative manifesto: such as the two-child limit and the winter fuel allowance. Yet on the issue of welfare reform, a fair few of them have broken ranks.

Of course, it’s one thing to denounce Government policy, quite another to vote against it. Many of these MPs, selected purely for their promise of obedience, will surely get cold feet. But the spirit of mutiny doesn’t just vanish, nor do the feelings of shame when you’re forced to vote for a policy you despise. From now on, Starmer should be on rebellion watch. For even his army of loyalists now know they have nothing to lose given the dire polls reflecting their constituents’ verdict on this first year of a Labour Government.

It is ironic that, despite its enormous majority, the Labour Party has never been more paranoid and controlling — today it’s even worse than when I resigned last September. Already back then the regime had become so stifling that any political points or objections raised that were even slightly at odds with the often vacuous “party lines” were met with the sharp lash of discipline, investigation, briefing campaigns, and silence. Given this rule of fear, the rebellion over disability benefit is even more extraordinary.

Suggested reading

The Labour Party has a woman problem

By Rosie Duffield

Yet knowing Starmer, he will be oblivious to all this. Just look at his catastrophic admission that he hadn’t even read his “Island of Strangers” speech. But, then, he’s never been one for reading the room, let alone speeches. When I was in the Labour Party, he was always aloof and awkward around backbench MPs; rarely deigning to speak to them. I worked with him for eight years, in a considerably smaller group of Labour MPs, and most of us never caught even a glimpse of this much-vaunted “soft side”.

Consider his behavior during the election campaign. When the general election was announced by the then prime minister, Rishi Sunak, we were all summoned to a campaign launch on Zoom. The existing Labour MPs were put on mute, and forced to listen to motivational wisdom from Starmer, Pat McFadden and Morgan McSweeney. Starmer began his talk by saying how excited he was to work with the greatest bunch of candidates he’d ever seen — that is, not us, but the several hundred strangers whose bobbing heads had joined the call. Cue: anger among the veterans. To have survived the 2019 electoral wipeout was an extreme political test, and one that we had endured and Starmer consistently ignored. It was a huge kick in the teeth.

His remarkable lack of tact became even clearer during the campaign. Those of us in “defensive seats” were not only charged vast amounts of money for campaign materials, but we received little to no support from the Party. It’s no mean feat to fundraise to pay for leaflets while touring your constituency, answering urgent casework, preparing for hustings, and doing endless media. On top of that, we “veterans” were threatened, bullied, and reprimanded if we didn’t also drop our own campaigns to go and help out the new candidates, miles away and entirely at our own expense. Several of us were also encouraged — deeply unsubtly — to abandon our seats: to “go to the Lords” and make way for a favored loyalist. Loyal to the Party, if not the man, most of us deemed problematic enough for such an approach all refused to budge.

Since then, the old guard has taken great career risks to push back on bad politics, and even worse behavior. They fought off the Winter Fuel Allowance, forced U-turns, and have now orchestrated an uprising against the welfare reform bill. Although I am no longer in the Party, I continue to fight alongside my former friends and colleagues for the political good. And from the outside, I can see the Labour Party’s flaws even more clearly.

Suggested reading

The populist revolt isn’t over

By Aris Roussinos

Some on the inside can too. Rumors abound that a few pusillanimous MPs, doomed to be one-termers, are considering doing the unthinkable to save their seats — defecting to Reform. Some are apparently even eyeing up the dubious charms of the Green Party. There’s Starmerite loyalty for you. Splinters on the Left are becoming dangerous cracks as the Prime Minister drags the Labour Party Rightwards in the hope of vanquishing Farage. But as Morgan McSweeney and Peter Mandelson continue to whisper sweet populisms in his ear, there’s a chance the more Left-wing MPs will rise up. Of course Reform poses a grave threat to Labour, and one that should be confronted. But you do that by remembering that you are the party of the Left. And some still do.

So as he wakes this morning, last year’s triumph a distant memory, the Prime Minister may think that he has offered enough of a sop to keep the Starmtroopers on side. The uprising has been put down. But for how long? The welfare reform bill has shown this new cohort is not entirely naïve. In time, more of the Left-wingers among them might even gain the courage of their convictions and start to speak up. If I were Keir Starmer, I wouldn’t be celebrating this Friday.

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.

The only message I’ve had from the Party since the debate was from the Deputy Whips’ office yesterday — I was chastised for not attending a routine Statutory Instruments Committee sitting because… I was busy being shouted down by two Labour MPs and completely forgot. To be fair, Emily Thornberry, shadow Attorney General, did come out and say that the debate wasn’t “Labour’s finest hour”, before clarifying that this was because it distracted from “the most vulnerable in society, who are trans people”. Keir, meanwhile, said nothing. It was as if I didn’t exist — but, then, perhaps the Leader’s Office wishes I didn’t.

Suggested reading

JK Rowling works her magic again

By Julie Bindel

I should have been the perfect Labour MP. I was a single mum. I was on benefits, which topped up my salary as a Teaching Assistant. I understood hardship, and what ordinary women wanted and needed from politics. The year before I was elected, I earned less than £10,000. On my first day in Westminster, I had to borrow money to pay for the train fare. I was a woman who knew what struggle meant. And I was a Member of Parliament, having turned a “True Blue” Tory seat Red for the first time in history.

So, what did the Labour Party make of my historic win? Well, it was exciting at first. My face was plastered on all the Big Screens at conference. They showed a film of my victory. When Labour’s leading men, such as Jeremy Corbyn, Len McClusky or Ian McNichol joyfully exclaimed “We won Canterbury!”, there were cheers and a standing ovation. They all used that victory in their speeches, but I rarely heard mention of my name. Not one of them had been to Canterbury to campaign. Nobody in the Party had expected me to win. The total outsider, the only red dot in a sea of blue, was only here because of the swell of Corbyn mania. Two years on, when that bubble burst with the Party’s crushing defeat and the rejection of Corbyn, my tiny majority increased ten times.

Then I liked a tweet.

It was fairly innocuous: Piers Morgan had replied “Do you mean women?” to a tweet advising “individuals with a cervix” to get screened for cancer. I think I probably knew there was a chance it would cause me some trouble, but it seemed a safe way to enter this debate publicly. That’s when the floodgates really opened. Faced with a tsunami of online vitriol, including calls for my job and even my life, I then posted a tweet of my own, asking why it was “transphobic” to say that only women have a cervix. What happened next was a blur. I received more threats. The alarm bells went off in Pink News that another Terf was in town (happy to be part of the gang!). Owen Jones issued a grovelling apology for attending my election rally (not as sorry as I am!), while seemingly every Labour university student group called on the Party to stop me being an MP (obviously not students of how politics works!).

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Why the Tavistock won't talk to me

By Hadley Freeman

But from the Labour Party — silence. They think the transgender debate is nothing more than a culture-war issue. A weapon used by the Tories to whip up division. It is a smokescreen that has nothing to do with women’s rights. Ordinary people don’t care about mixed-sex changing rooms. Or the prospect of men entering women’s refuges. Or the erasure of the word “cervix”. What this debate is really about, women are told, is bigotry and prejudice.

I know that is not the case.

Then I think of the flowers. After I liked that tweet and started to speak up, the flowers started to arrive: more than 350 bunches in just two days. And there were messages. Thousands of them. From women and men telling me they were grateful for somebody speaking out. From people who voted Labour, Tory, Lib Dem and Green. Every day, survivors of domestic violence still message me, telling me not to stop. Keir may dismiss this as a culture-war issue, but for these women, it is most definitely not.

And 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.

For all of Corbyn’s faults — and I was an outspoken critic of all of them — his party’s General Secretary, Jennie Formby, came to every meeting of the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party that she was invited to, even when she was going through chemotherapy. David Evans, her replacement, has been two or three times, yet we are the biggest group in the Party, the largest group of women in Parliament, and we all won or held onto our seats against the odds in 2019. Who knows? Perhaps we may even know a thing or two about politics or winning? (His suggestion that us ladies would do well to read the latest doorstep scripts written by staff didn’t exactly go down well.)

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 Phillips 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. When I come home at night, I feel low-level trauma at my political isolation.

Sitting on the front bench with Keir are MPs who defended Corbyn or remained silent when the rest of us were calling him out for antisemitism. Sitting on our front bench is an MP who was voted in as a Conservative. Not sitting on the front bench, however, is a single MP who believes that biological sex can’t be erased at the stroke of a pen. To go into a workplace, when nothing you say or experience as a politician or a woman is of any worth — what’s progressive about that?

I may not be quite as radical a feminist as my wonderful friend Julie Bindel, but what I am is a progressive, Left-wing MP who cares about ordinary women, and now wonders whether the party I represent is capable of standing up for them. I am not going to join the Conservatives, or the Lib Dems or the Greens. But this party doesn’t always feel like home. 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.

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?

More from this author

The Labour Party has a woman problem

By Rosie Duffield

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?

I feel like a muggle. I do not possess that particular spell — it seems to be a closely guarded one, handed down through families or magical societies. But I’m not a dunce at this school. My own achievements may pale in comparison but I am proud of them: winning a seat never before held by a woman, or any member of my party; refusing to allow fear or threat or the silence of those around me to stop me from calling out antisemitism and telling the most basic of truths about male violence and biology. But more than that, I appear to have influenced not only Government policy but my own school rules as well. Something that I have been campaigning on, along with friends at other schools, has now made it into our mission statement. But I found out in the same way that those anointed to the front row did — through social media.

So, back in the real world, I will continue to fulfil the role I have been permanently cast in: the child announcing the Emperor is stark naked as he parades a new suit of clothes spun by a couple of charlatan tailors, versed at spinning tall tales to please those in power.

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.

The only message I’ve had from the Party since the debate was from the Deputy Whips’ office yesterday — I was chastised for not attending a routine Statutory Instruments Committee sitting because… I was busy being shouted down by two Labour MPs and completely forgot. To be fair, Emily Thornberry, shadow Attorney General, did come out and say that the debate wasn’t “Labour’s finest hour”, before clarifying that this was because it distracted from “the most vulnerable in society, who are trans people”. Keir, meanwhile, said nothing. It was as if I didn’t exist — but, then, perhaps the Leader’s Office wishes I didn’t.

Suggested reading

JK Rowling works her magic again

By Julie Bindel

I should have been the perfect Labour MP. I was a single mum. I was on benefits, which topped up my salary as a Teaching Assistant. I understood hardship, and what ordinary women wanted and needed from politics. The year before I was elected, I earned less than £10,000. On my first day in Westminster, I had to borrow money to pay for the train fare. I was a woman who knew what struggle meant. And I was a Member of Parliament, having turned a “True Blue” Tory seat Red for the first time in history.

So, what did the Labour Party make of my historic win? Well, it was exciting at first. My face was plastered on all the Big Screens at conference. They showed a film of my victory. When Labour’s leading men, such as Jeremy Corbyn, Len McClusky or Ian McNichol joyfully exclaimed “We won Canterbury!”, there were cheers and a standing ovation. They all used that victory in their speeches, but I rarely heard mention of my name. Not one of them had been to Canterbury to campaign. Nobody in the Party had expected me to win. The total outsider, the only red dot in a sea of blue, was only here because of the swell of Corbyn mania. Two years on, when that bubble burst with the Party’s crushing defeat and the rejection of Corbyn, my tiny majority increased ten times.

Then I liked a tweet.

It was fairly innocuous: Piers Morgan had replied “Do you mean women?” to a tweet advising “individuals with a cervix” to get screened for cancer. I think I probably knew there was a chance it would cause me some trouble, but it seemed a safe way to enter this debate publicly. That’s when the floodgates really opened. Faced with a tsunami of online vitriol, including calls for my job and even my life, I then posted a tweet of my own, asking why it was “transphobic” to say that only women have a cervix. What happened next was a blur. I received more threats. The alarm bells went off in Pink News that another Terf was in town (happy to be part of the gang!). Owen Jones issued a grovelling apology for attending my election rally (not as sorry as I am!), while seemingly every Labour university student group called on the Party to stop me being an MP (obviously not students of how politics works!).

Suggested reading

Why the Tavistock won't talk to me

By Hadley Freeman

But from the Labour Party — silence. They think the transgender debate is nothing more than a culture-war issue. A weapon used by the Tories to whip up division. It is a smokescreen that has nothing to do with women’s rights. Ordinary people don’t care about mixed-sex changing rooms. Or the prospect of men entering women’s refuges. Or the erasure of the word “cervix”. What this debate is really about, women are told, is bigotry and prejudice.

I know that is not the case.

Then I think of the flowers. After I liked that tweet and started to speak up, the flowers started to arrive: more than 350 bunches in just two days. And there were messages. Thousands of them. From women and men telling me they were grateful for somebody speaking out. From people who voted Labour, Tory, Lib Dem and Green. Every day, survivors of domestic violence still message me, telling me not to stop. Keir may dismiss this as a culture-war issue, but for these women, it is most definitely not.

And 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.

For all of Corbyn’s faults — and I was an outspoken critic of all of them — his party’s General Secretary, Jennie Formby, came to every meeting of the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party that she was invited to, even when she was going through chemotherapy. David Evans, her replacement, has been two or three times, yet we are the biggest group in the Party, the largest group of women in Parliament, and we all won or held onto our seats against the odds in 2019. Who knows? Perhaps we may even know a thing or two about politics or winning? (His suggestion that us ladies would do well to read the latest doorstep scripts written by staff didn’t exactly go down well.)

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 Phillips 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. When I come home at night, I feel low-level trauma at my political isolation.

Sitting on the front bench with Keir are MPs who defended Corbyn or remained silent when the rest of us were calling him out for antisemitism. Sitting on our front bench is an MP who was voted in as a Conservative. Not sitting on the front bench, however, is a single MP who believes that biological sex can’t be erased at the stroke of a pen. To go into a workplace, when nothing you say or experience as a politician or a woman is of any worth — what’s progressive about that?

I may not be quite as radical a feminist as my wonderful friend Julie Bindel, but what I am is a progressive, Left-wing MP who cares about ordinary women, and now wonders whether the party I represent is capable of standing up for them. I am not going to join the Conservatives, or the Lib Dems or the Greens. But this party doesn’t always feel like home. 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.