Mick Hartley

Labour's latest MP,  25-year-old Keir Mather, interviewed in the Times:

At Oxford, did he really call Germaine Greer “an abhorrent transphobe” for saying trans women weren’t really women? He flannels. “It’s half a decade ago now. The debate was extremely hot; I can’t remember the context.” He goes on about kindness and empathy. “On the question of, ‘What is a woman?’ a woman is like my mum or my stepsister, somebody who is born biologically a woman. But there is a very small minority of people who feel like they’ve been born into the wrong gender and they deserve respect and care.” Does he now wish to repudiate what he said about Greer, bearing in mind Sir Keir Starmer seems finally to have decided that a woman can’t have a penis? “What I said is on the record. I really strongly disagree with her outlook and approach to the issue.”

Oh I'm pretty sure he can remember the context. As Steerpike in the Spectator reminds us, what he said after Greer was invited to the Oxford Union in 2018 was that she'd made "dehumanising and downright dangerous comments about transgender women". That is, that they're not women.

And despite the flanneling and toeing the party line, it's clear enough that he hasn't really changed his mind.