Labour is full of liars

When Starmer says he was pleased to be at the National Annual Women’s Conference, let's all remind him he thinks some women have a penis

Keir Starmer being interviewed by Victoria Derbyshire on Sunday 8th October 2023

Labour is tying itself in knots over potential reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, 2004. At one and the same time, it  wants to appear fully supportive of both the new wave of trans ideology and of women-only spaces and sex-based rights, yet has the nerve to accuse the Tories of “weaponising the gender war” after Rishi Sunak made the statement “You can’t change sex”.

But it is very hard to trust Labour when they have been so entrenched in trans ideology in recent years, with Starmer saying only in April that “some women can have a penis”, and Lisa Nandy arguing that male child sex offenders posing as women should be allowed in women’s prisons.  

The Gender Recognition Act 2004 enabled people in the UK to legally “change sex” by acquiring a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). But to qualify for a GRC, two doctors have to agree that the individual is suffering from gender dysphoria before getting their decision approved by a medical panel. Applicants must also have “lived as the opposite sex” for at least two years. But the latest Labour statement on the gender war is worrying. Although they have dropped their support of the disastrous self-ID policy, where all anyone has to do to be handed a GRC is to ‘self-declare’ as the opposite sex, they are now stating that:

“The current process of gender recognition is intrusive, outdated, and humiliating. Labour

will modernise, simplify and reform the gender recognition law to a new process, taking

into account international evidence of what works effectively…”

This can only mean scrapping both the requirement for a medical diagnosis and approval by a panel of experts from the process of legally changing sex.

I am not alone in suspecting that senior figures in the Labour Party, including Keir Starmer, remain committed to introducing self-ID if they win the election. Plenty of trans activists within the party continue to speak publicly in support of this nonsense – a couple of weeks ago, Kate Osborne MP tweeted “Yes, some women have a penis.”

These new Labour Party proposals will satisfy nobody. What does it mean when they pledge to “work to end discrimination against trans people”? Trans activists consider having to be diagnosed as gender dysphoric by doctors as ‘discriminatory’ – and many claim that excluding “trans women” from women only spaces is wholly wrong.

When Anneliese Dodds wrote in July that Labour would “modernise, simplify and reform the gender recognition law to a new process” and “remove invasive bureaucracy”, she could only be talking about introducing some form of self-ID.

Starmer is now retreating from his previous hard-line ‘trans women are women’ stance – but it's too late to undo the damage caused by the demonisation of women whose valid concerns mean they have since been expelled from (or left) the Party. By making a stand on female hospital wards. Meanwhile, the Tories have won over some ex-Labour voters by making a stand on female-only hospital wards. Labour has no-one to blame but itself.