Mick Hartley

The forthcoming Labour conference in Brighton seems to be getting off to a bad start, as rumours circulate that gender-critical MP Rosie Duffield may be prevented from attending by security concerns. Debbie Hayton in the Spectator:

The bullying and harassment of Duffield has been ongoing since she expressed her view that ‘only women have a cervix’, and it has become a stain on the party. Let’s be clear, Duffield is neither homophobic nor transphobic; she just doesn’t believe that men can become women by signing a piece of paper.

Which, in today's Labour Party, is an unforgivable sin.

Four thousand miles away in Kabul, women are being forced to stay home by a misogynist regime that has seized power in Afghanistan. No doubt this situation will be protested vociferously at the Labour party conference. But it will ring hollow if one of their own MPs – a woman whose harrowing account of domestic abuse shocked the House of Commons – finds herself staying home during the party conference.

Starmer has a little over two weeks to sort out this mess. The party claims that its Brighton shindig will be ‘a real opportunity to be a part of democracy in action.’ That will be open to interpretation if they cannot guarantee the safety of women accused of wrongthink by the transgender lobby.

Duffield might be the lightning rod, but the problem is much wider. The party has drifted far from the electorate they once took for granted. While self-identification of legal sex might excite young political activists within the party, the voters on the red wall have other concerns, not least jobs, health, education and public services. They also know the difference between men and women.

The people going after Duffield are certainly devoted to their own opinions, creeds and dogmas. Starmer needs to find his backbone and stand up to them before they consign the Labour party to the political wilderness for years to come.

This kind of issue matters to the left-liberal middle class who now dominate the Labour Party, but not all to the "red wall" that Labour are leaving behind. And for Starmer, despite his rhetoric, it's still the former who pull the strings.