Mick Hartley

More on Labour's determination to go ahead with that ban on conversion therapy, including a ban on those attempting to dissuade childfren from trying to change sex – an impossibility – through medical mutilation. Joanna Williams:

Sir Keir is adamant that, on his watch, a conversion therapy ban will be ‘trans inclusive’. In other words, it won’t just outlaw attempts to turn homosexuals straight but, crucially, it will most likely make it illegal to try and change someone’s gender identity. Under a Labour government, facts be damned. If a man thinks he is a woman, it will be against the law to try and persuade him otherwise.

This trans-inclusivity matters to the Labour party because without it, there’s little to justify calls for a ban on conversion therapy. The days of chemical castration and electro-shock therapy are, thankfully, long gone. A handful of unhappy adults might seek out a vicar to pray with them, but there is no evidence that gay people are being routinely subjected to conversion therapy.

If it doesn’t include transgender people, Starmer’s proposed ban is pointless.

No doubt he's aware of that. But Starmer braved the wrath of left activists by pushing hard against Corbyn-era antisemitism, so he's not about to risk another battle against all the trans activists in Labour's ranks – including shadow ministers – when the LGBT+ ticket plays so well to the party faithful. Never mind that, as most people are now only too well aware, the T has no place alongside the LGB – is in fact in opposition to the LGB.

His proposed ‘full, trans-inclusive ban on all forms of conversion therapy’ is particularly concerning for children. There has been a shocking rise in the number of children, particularly teenage girls, who claim to be transgender. Their first recourse is most likely parents or teachers; informal conversations often determine what happens next. Loving reassurance that the best thing is to wait and see gives children time to grow up and potentially change their minds. Yet banning conversion therapy casts a glare of suspicion over such reassurances. Rather than responding from the heart, parents and teachers will worry about being criminalised. A trans-inclusive conversion therapy ban threatens the intimacy of family relationships.

Many gender-confused children grow up to be happily homosexual. Ironically, a future ban on conversion therapy could send these youngsters headlong down a path to medical interventions that will ‘trans away the gay’. The most gruesome forms of medical conversion therapy might have had their day. But, under a future Labour government, young lesbians will be able to get their breasts cut off and become straight trans men while gay men can be transformed into hormone-pumped trans women. This is conversion therapy on steroids. Or, more accurately, on testosterone.

Labour’s allegiance to the rainbow flag means the party will plough on with banning conversion therapy despite the risk such legislation poses to vulnerable children. In his speech to LGBT+ Labour, Starmer also announced plans for tougher hate crime legislation and a promise to ‘modernise the Gender Recognition Act’.

Sir Keir’s flip flopping eventually brought him to a place where he can say that 99.9 per cent of women do not have a penis. But, it seems, this insight will do nothing to stop Labour making it easier for gender-confused children to be pushed towards medication and surgery and for men to enter women’s spaces. For the sake of family life, children’s health, lesbian and gay rights and women’s safety, it is vital Starmer’s conversion therapy plans are thwarted long before he gains the keys to 10 Downing Street.