Mick Hartley

Keir Starmer is trying to win back the so-called "red wall" – voters who abandoned the Labour Party because of what they perceived as its pandering to the concerns of the leftie metropolitans who backed Corbyn. There could hardly be a more obvious issue that alienates that red wall – especially the women – than gender identity. It's a cause dear to the hearts of a small "progressive" minority who make a lot of noise, but a clear turn-off for the overwhelming majority of voters. Yet Starmer can't quite bring himself to make the choice and back women against the trans activists. It's the obvious way to go – but the man just hasn't got the bottle.

Janice Turner in the Times – Sir Keir Starmer must respect women or lose them:

Labour, like all progressive parties, is being torn apart by the quasi-religious schism of gender. Two warring tribes have emerged: “gender critical” feminists who believe single-sex spaces, in prisons or refuges, are needed to protect women; and LGBT Labour which argues if a biological male identifies as a woman they must, immediately and in every circumstance, be treated as female.

But Labour, as with Brexit, has opted for fudge. In June Sir Keir Starmer vowed to introduce gender self-ID, after previously saying single-sex spaces should stay. There’s a clear conflict of rights. Yet to LGBT Labour, even acknowledging that two sides exist is “transphobic”.

Now Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP who's endured extreme physical threats for the crime of tweeting that only women have cervixes, won’t be attending next week’s Labour conference because of concerns over her safety.

Starmer has texted Duffield, a victim of domestic abuse, to say he’s sorry she felt unsafe, but offered no help with security. Nor has he publicly defended her after a year of angry demands she lose the whip. “Keir is terrified of conflict,” says one MP. “He just hopes it will all go away.”

No chance of that. In all left-of- centre political parties the gender wars are escalating. Asked on Radio 4’s Today if he believed “there should be spaces where biological males can’t go”, the LibDem leader Sir Ed Davey replied: “No.” The very morning a government report revealed an epidemic of violence against women and girls, Davey promised to scrap all existing female safeguards.

In the SNP, civil war has broken out over its pledge, in alliance with the Greens, to push through self-ID for over-16s. A movement, Women Won’t Wheesht (shut up), was formed to oppose SNP proposals such as erasing data about biological sex from the Scottish census and denying raped women the right to choose a female medical examiner. When the Tory MSP Murdo Fraser referenced a large WWW protest outside the Scottish parliament, Nicola Sturgeon heckled: “Shame on you!” Women’s concerns, she said, are “not valid”.

Even the Women’s Equality Party (WEP) is riven. This summer it held a “members assembly” to formulate a position on self-ID to put before the membership. But when the results came back solidly against, the WEP leadership abandoned the exercise. Women are leaving in fury.

Meanwhile in the Green Party, so ideologically outré it calls women “self-identifying non-males”, gender is the key battleground of its leadership election. The trans activist Sian Berry resigned because Shahrar Ali was appointed to the front bench. Now Ali is standing for leader himself, laying out his unapologetic gender critical position. “A woman is commonly defined as an adult human female and, genetically, typified by two XX chromosomes,” he wrote. “These facts are not in dispute nor should they be in any political party.”

Yet, unbelievably, they are. Next election the question to trip up every politician won’t be on social care or immigration, but: “What is a woman?” A Green candidate at a hustings stated a woman “was an attitude”. Davey’s predecessor Jo Swinson, when asked if humans are born either male or female, replied: “Not from what I’ve read.” Get your answer sorted, because women are watching.

And, boy, are they angry. Politicians who think this is a niche issue, not worthy of expending political capital, are deluded. Almost every day, women come up to me to convey their rage. Why can’t they say “breast feeding”? Why are they called “menstruators”? Why are women prisoners expected to be cellmates with sex offenders because male gender identity always trumps female safety? They’re no longer intimidated by their privileged, pronoun-obsessed student daughters. They are livid at being hectored by woke men — both gay and straight — that they are bigoted just for wanting to keep their meagre, flimsy hard-won rights. And more are prepared to say so….

On this issue only the Tories are reading the room. When people wonder why Liz Truss comes top in party members’ polls they forget about women, who are grateful she is fearlessly defending their rights. Kemi Badenoch is vilified by activists for her science-based, humane attempt to balance trans and women’s needs as equalities minister, but stands firm.

Starmer too needs to grasp the gender nettle. These extreme LGBT activists are a small, unrepresentative hard-left group who hate him anyway: women are half the electorate. Starmer must choose a shadow equalities minister ready to defend women. Then he must defend her. Because there’s a new political slogan in town: “If you don’t respect my sex, you can’t expect to get my X.”

It's not likely. The trans activists have convinced too many on the left that theirs is the progressive way forward. And Starmer, by my reading, just isn't the man to challenge them.