How Keir Starmer can make it up to Rosie Duffield

Congratulations to Rosie Duffield, who has won re-election for a third time as Labour MP for Canterbury. For many women – and men, indeed – Duffield’s courageous stance on sex and gender has been a beacon of sense, and a reason to vote Labour. She increased her majority from 1,800 to almost 9,000, an astonishing success in a county where she had previously been the sole Labour MP.

Duffield’s success owes little to Keir Starmer who couldn’t even be bothered to invite her to his election campaign launch just up the road in Gillingham. Perhaps he is still smarting over cervix-gate, but he alone is responsible for that. It was Starmer who claimed that it’s ‘not right’ to say that only women have a cervix. However, that embarrassing nonsense followed Duffield’s ‘liking’ of a tweet from Piers Morgan that harrumphed a reference from CNN to ‘individuals with a cervix’.