Victoria Smith on Starmer’s refusal to defend Rosie Duffield:

This week Duffield announced that she would not be attending local hustings due to threats of violence. To anyone who has witnessed the escalating abuse she has received for defending sex-based rights, this was not surprising. Then again, nor was it surprising to fellow MPs such as Jess Phillips, who has also faced threats to her own and her family’s safety, simply for doing her job.

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Many of those who threaten MPs are paranoid, mentally unwell, in thrall to conspiracy theories, and/or egged on by extremist groups. They must be held responsible for their actions, but we also cannot ignore those who have encouraged them.

The truth is that in Duffield’s situation, some of this encouragement has come from Labour activists themselves, and in some cases sitting MPs. I am sure these people would claim that they would never advocate violence. I believe them. However, I would ask them this: if you are going to sign a pledge that denounces feminist organisations who believe sex matters as “hate groups”, or permit mob harassment of feminists at your conference, or accuse female MPs speaking of male violence of making “transphobic, dog-whistle speeches”, what do you expect to happen? To be clear, the events I refer to are not recent, nor are they specific to Rosie Duffield. This has been going on for years.

A lot of years. We’ve become accustomed to seeing former friends talk about us as if we were Nazis bent on genocide.

To be fair to Keir Starmer, he has not been involved in the worst of it (he did not sign the infamous pledge). However, if you are going to link the death of a child to Rosie Duffield saying “only women have a cervix”, what do you think that signals to someone who has been radicalised into thinking feminists want trans children dead? One response to Jess Phillips’ tweet claimed that since Duffield “spreads hate about trans people daily” she has no right to “play the victim”. Plenty of Labour activists have endorsed this view and no one in authority has told them to stop.

People who threaten or commit violence often delude themselves that it is in self-defence. Once someone has reached this state, it is hard to convince them otherwise. Labour’s “both sides” approach to the trans debate has told some deeply unhappy people that feminist MPs really are out to get them. Why should anyone be surprised if some of them believe it?

Never mind. Starmer has football to watch.