Rosie Duffield

Rosemary Clare Duffield (born 1 July 1971) is British Labour Party politician. She has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Canterbury since the general election in June 2017.

Early life
Duffield was born in London, left school at the age of 16, and worked as a teaching assistant before becoming a full-time writer. She is a single mother of two children and had lived in Canterbury for 19 years before standing for election as the city's MP. She was previously Chair of the Canterbury Labour Party and has been an active campaigner for a range of issues, including animal rights and environmental protection.

Career
Duffield was elected to parliament in 2017 defeating Sir Julian Brazier with a majority of 187. She is the first non-Conservative Member of Parliament to represent Canterbury since its reformulation as a single-member constituency in 1885 (as the MP serving from 1910 until 1918, Francis Bennett-Goldney, was an Independent Unionist) and became the first Labour MP to represent the constituency. At the time of the 2017 General Election, Canterbury had been the longest-held constituency of the seventy-one taken, five years longer-held than Mansfield which swang to the Conservative candidate.

She was criticised for campaigning, during her first election, against grammar schools at the same time as sending her children to local grammar schools.

In October 2017, Duffield apologised to the Canterbury LGBT community for accepting a £500 payment to appear on Russian state-owned broadcaster "RT", amid a deteriorating climate for LGBT citizens in Russia.