Mick Hartley

Has Labour really changed its tune on gender? Janice Turner in the Times:

"Firstly,” said Sir Keir Starmer, “a woman is an adult female, so let’s clear that one up.” And in uttering this dictionary definition on LBC he revealed a monumental policy shift. For years women have been vilified, silenced, branded bigots, suffered internal party investigations and death threats for holding this very view. Now the Labour leader was not just declaring that the witch-hunts, most notably of JK Rowling, were over, but the witches were right all along.

Why did this cautious, conflict-averse man finally get off the fence? Mainly to neutralise a rare Tory attack line, that Labour can’t define a woman. Starmer, who’d squirmed on TV muttering about cervixes and what percentage of women have penises, knew that until Labour had a coherent answer, this question would blight every election debate.

Labour’s position on gender risked few potential votes in a cost of living crisis but it made its politicians look weak, silly and extreme. So at last Sunday’s National Policy Forum a promise to change the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) to a process of self-ID was removed from Labour’s manifesto. Every poll shows that self-ID is unpopular, while even Nicola Sturgeon struggled to justify why the male rapist Adam/Isla Bryson should be housed in a women’s prison and could, on release, use female changing rooms.

Labour presented this new policy as a genius compromise, transcending two puerile opposing factions — gender-critical feminists and trans activists — when in fact it was (subject to small print) what women’s groups wanted all along. The opposition leader’s inner circle might have known that if they’d deigned to meet them, rather than dismissing concerns about legal erasure of biological sex and hard-won female protections as piffling, hysterical and right wing.

Given that this decision was driven by electoral self-interest, can Labour be trusted not to backtrack once in power? Yes, as long as Starmer remains leader. The Labour elite keeps its gender views quiet, but key figures — Bridget Phillipson at education, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, Steve Reid at justice and Shabana Mahmood, national campaign co-ordinator — are quietly gender-critical.

Hmm. Maybe. On the other hand a large and vocal Labour contingent – from deputy leader Angela Rayner down to hotheads like Lloyd Russell-Moyle – are still very much on the trans self-ID wagon. And Starmer holds no firm belief here: it's all electoral calculation and taking whatever opinion suits for the moment. "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them… well, I have others". 

This, though, is encouraging:

A senior member of the Labour frontbench has offered an apology to a fellow MP, Rosie Duffield, who has said she felt ostracised by the party because of her views on gender reforms.

Duffield had also accused male party colleagues of trying to shout her down in the Commons earlier this year when she spoke to back the government’s move to block gender reforms proposed in Scotland.

The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, said in an interview on Times Radio on Friday: “I’m really sorry about the way Rosie’s been treated.”