Mick Hartley

Decca Aitkenhead interviews Labour's Deputy leader Angela Rayner, and…oh dear:

I like and admire Rayner so much that I wish we weren’t going to have an argument. In the week before we meet the headlines were dominated by Isla Bryson, the trans woman convicted of double rape and remanded to a women’s prison before public pressure forced the Scottish Prison Service into a U-turn. Rayner is a big supporter of Labour’s promise to introduce trans self-identification — “The way in which people can transition at the moment is really challenging and very dehumanising” — has insisted “trans women’s rights are women’s rights” and has said it’s “not acceptable” to ask a trans woman if she has a penis.

She can probably guess, I suggest, the contentious issue on which we may disagree. She looks blank. “I have no idea.”

Is Isla Bryson a woman? “The recent case?” Looking slightly thrown, she starts talking about guidelines, processes, safeguards, circumstances. “So from what I know about the case, I would not have been putting that person in a women-only prison.” But that wasn’t the question, so I ask again.

“Well, that person’s identifying as a woman now. But they’re right at the beginning of a transition — that they believe is right for them, however, and that’s fine. We respect that. That doesn’t mean to say by respecting it you instantly say, OK, well, that person then goes into a vulnerable space.”

Rayner keeps saying Bryson is “at the very start of the process” of becoming a woman, and keeps citing this as a reason why she should not be in a women’s jail. But Bryson began gender reassignment therapy back in 2020, shortly after she was charged. The SNP’s new Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which Labour voted for, would grant a gender recognition certificate (GRC) to any adult who declared they had been living in their acquired gender for just three months. In other words, had the law Rayner’s own party supports been in place when Bryson began her transition, she could by now have been legally female for more than two years. Even under the existing legislation, brought in by Labour in 2004, Bryson is by now eligible to apply for a GRC, although as far as anyone knows she does not have one. The Scottish Prison Service still remanded her to a women’s jail, though, because several years ago it quietly adopted a de facto self-ID policy — the very policy Rayner supports. By the logic of Rayner’s own stated beliefs, Bryson is categorically a woman.

Bryson, 31, claims to have known she was a woman since she was four. Does that mean she was a woman when she raped her victims? Rayner looks puzzled.

“Well, I don’t know. Because I don’t know what’s inside that person’s head.” I agree, it is impossible for anyone to know. But according to the principle of self-ID, what’s inside someone’s head should determine their legal right to access female-only spaces.

Rayner says Bryson should be in a men’s prison because “that person is a dangerous person who was proven to be a dangerous person and could continue to be a dangerous person”. If I were sent to jail, there is every chance I’d be locked up with dangerous women. We’re not sending them to men’s prisons, though. So why Bryson?

“Because … because … it’s where … you’ve got to take it as a whole of the circumstances.”

Do these circumstances include the fact that Bryson has a penis? “No, it’s because Isla Bryson has done damage and harm to women.” With? “Yeah, sure, I mean …” She looks cross and flustered. “It doesn’t matter whether it was a penis or some implementation.” I think Bryson’s victims would say her penis played an important part in her crimes. Does the phrase “her penis” even make any sense? “I think … to be honest, I don’t think that particularly matters.”

The Bryson case is important because it exposes the logical implications of allowing a person’s legal gender, irrespective of biology, to be a matter for them simply to decide for themselves. I want to be reassured that Rayner has really thought this through. But she doesn’t seem to have interrogated her own position on this issue very thoroughly at all, and looks increasingly confused when I try to.

“I think people just want to see the human side of being compassionate for people, but also seek that reassurance around safe spaces. I don’t think those two things are incompatible. There has to be some movement that is compassionate and in line with our British values.”

She repeats this “our British values” line more than once, making me wonder if this will be Labour’s new soundbite in the debate on trans rights, but never explains how these values might reassure all the left-leaning women who tell me they can’t vote for a party that won’t even define what a woman is. I can only think Starmer has calculated that he can afford to lose their votes. Has Labour, I ask, at least conducted private polling to find out exactly how many they are risking?

The suggestion seems to surprise her. “I don’t know.”

She – and the Labour Party – seem to be following Nicola Sturgeon's example of bewildered non-sequitors and evasions.

They've dug their hole, and they're going to keep digging.