Mick Hartley

Joan Smith at UnHerd – Keir Starmer is gaslighting women:

Does Sir Keir Starmer know there’s a war on? Last week the Labour leader visited a country literally on the doorstep of Russia. Speaking to a Times journalist at the biggest military base in Estonia, a Baltic state with every reason to fear the intentions of its aggressive neighbour, he had a very important message. Employing the forensic skills that made him a QC, he homed in on the most significant issue of the day: “Trans women are women”, he declared. “And that is not just my view — that is actually the law”.

It actually isn’t, but let’s leave that fact aside for the moment. Is this man stupid? A couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have said so. A couple of years ago, I voted for him in the Labour leadership contest, not because I thought he would be brilliant, but because I imagined he would at least be adequate. My expectations weren’t high, but they’ve still been disappointed. Last week he showed himself to be either stupid, or so committed to an extreme ideology that he has lost sight of its disastrous impact on women….

What is really terrible about Starmer’s “intervention” is that it feels deliberate. Two members of his shadow Cabinet had stumbled over the “what is a woman?” question earlier in the week, so it was entirely predictable that journalists would confront him with it. He could have said that it wasn’t the time or the place to talk about domestic politics. He could have responded “adult human female” and left it there. But he didn’t. He had his answer ready — and it could not have been more confrontational.

There can be little doubt that this is Starmer throwing down the gauntlet. In the past he has appeared shifty and uncomfortable when asked questions about biology, spouting nonsense about women’s bodies while looking like someone taking part in a hostage video. No, he told Andrew Marr, it isn’t right to say only women have a cervix. (I once had to have treatment for a pre-cancer of the cervix. I can assure you, and the leader of the Labour party, that all the patients at the clinic were women.)

Predictably enough, Harriet Harman joined in:

My spirits rose when I saw the headline: “Labour has a woman problem”. But it turned out Harman was talking about the fact that the party has never had a woman leader.

Later in the interview, using the awkward language Labour MPs habitually adopt when talking about this issue, she came out with this belter: “So far as I’m concerned, women are women who are born women, but women are also women who are trans women.” By Harman’s logic, the party’s first woman leader could be a man….

Starmer and his colleagues have confused a polite fiction — “trans women are women” — with reality. A piece of legislation that was passed almost two decades ago to make the lives of transgender people easier is now being used in a way that was never intended, making safeguarding of vulnerable women and girls difficult if not impossible.

You might think someone who used to be Director of Public Prosecutions would know that. You might think Starmer has first-hand experience of how predatory men operate, and be aware that they pretend to be all sorts of things — from harmless taxi drivers to trans women, on some well-documented occasions — to get access to potential victims. His staggeringly ill-judged interview in Estonia suggests otherwise. Back in the UK, women feel utterly betrayed — and many of us are wondering if we will ever be able to vote Labour again.