Mick Hartley

Keir Starmer's latest attempt to define a woman isn't quite the let's-put-this-nonsense-behind-us answer he was intending:

For months Starmer and his shadow cabinet have tied themselves in knots attempting to answer what appears to be a rather basic question: can a woman have a penis? Starmer’s failure to articulate a simple position has put him on a collision course with feminist groups and his own MP Rosie Duffield, who has claimed that the party has a “women problem”. In their view this represents a lessening of the importance of biological sex in the debate and opens up issues around safeguarding in single-sex spaces.

Duffield, who represents Canterbury, remains on the warpath; today, after Starmer visited Kent as part of the local election campaign, she tweeted: “What a shame he didn’t see fit to tell his only Kent MP about his first visit to our county.”

Clearly the issue is not going away. So has Starmer managed to work out a better answer yet?

Asked again on a train journey home from a visit to Plymouth on Friday, in an interview to mark the third anniversary of him winning the Labour leadership this week, he says: “For 99.9 per cent of women, it is completely biological . . . and of course they haven’t got a penis.”

So 0.1 per cent of women do have a penis.

Nope, he still doesn't get it.