Labour’s Character Flaw

Recently, some ‘gender critical’ Labour supporters welcomed the ‘progress’ they saw in an interview Keir Starmer gave to Mumsnet, in which the Labour Party leader was asked about the Cass Review’s interim report.

The review, led by the distinguished paediatrician and former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Dr Hilary Cass, highlights an overwhelming lack of evidence and medical consensus about the best approach to treating gender dysphoria in children. It points out that despite this, the NHS’s specialist Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) uses a child’s ‘expressed gender identity’ as the starting point for treatment.

The review says that the “affirmative approach” at GIDS leaves little space for exploration of ‘the potential relationship between their dysphoria and neurodiversity or psychosocial needs’, which would include childhood trauma or internalised hostility to same-sex attraction. It has compounded this lack of evidence with its own failure to track patient outcomes.

When faced with this in the interview, Starmer explained that he felt “very strongly that children shouldn’t be making these very important decisions without consent of their parents”.

For many of the Labour members who have resisted and fought against gender ideology and its impact on women and children, as well as experiencing the despair of their party falling all the way down this rabbit hole, this came as a signifier of progress.

It seems their desperation and desire for a credible alternative to the Conservatives is so profound, that they will take even the tiniest of morsels of reasonable language as hope. Even if this statement from the Labour leader is nothing of the sort.

Starmer admitting that as a parent he doesn’t think children should be allowed to decide to undergo treatment that could sterilise them or have perfectly healthy organs amputated for no medical reason, is hardly brave. And unless your bar is particularly low, it’s barely hopeful either.

But once your eyes are blinded by political allegiance on any side, there is often an irresistible urge to look for excuses in the most appalling stances and find assurance where there is none.

“How can voters trust a man who denies biological reality and does so merely to score points with an increasingly deranged and relatively small base? “

It’s understandable that many people are exhausted by politics and particularly those of the last few years. They will and have started to think, anything is better than this, surely? The polls tell that story in the UK. Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party hold a huge lead over an incumbent Conservative government, and at the moment it looks like the country is ultimately heading for a Labour government.

The Conservatives in Britain have been ideologically bankrupt since the 90s but have been able to trade effectively in elections with a veneer of competence. Competence in law and order, with the economy, with tax, and saying ‘the right things’ here and there about matters of immigration or Brexit.

It was easier before; post-Blair the Labour Party regularly offered up leaders who gave no one confidence in their fitness to lead, leaving a variety of Conservative leaders to do their worst and still win.

Things have changed though, and Sir Keir seems to have played a blinder in getting ahead. His tactic has been to turn up at the dispatch box in a nice suit, criticise government mistakes (regularly served to him it should be said), and offer up very little in terms of actual Labour policy.

But is Starmer really the white knight the country needs? Aside from the party’s faithful, are those calling for Keir thinking this through?

He’s often garnered a reaction of ‘Yes he’s quite boring and I don’t really know what he stands for, but at least he’s not a Tory’. That’s enough for some.

However, there is one critical but often unexplored flaw in Starmer’s Labour Party, and that’s the position it holds on gender ideology, particularly trans rights and how they come into conflict with women’s rights.

The Labour leader has stated that ‘trans women are women’, and yet has refused to have debate on the issue like many trans rights activists (TRAs). Everyone should wonder why any movement would be so resistant to debate or examination. And why in the act of denying it, it would impose censorship and taboos with religious zeal, on those who question it.

In simple terms trans activism demands that gender identity should override sex in law and society. As Eliza Mondegreen says, it “redefines ‘women’ and ‘men’ from sex classes based on reproductive role into mixed-sex classes based on individuals’ inner sense of being a man, woman, both, or neither. A mixed-sex definition of ‘woman’ will put males on women’s shortlists, in women’s sports, prisons, and domestic violence refuges.”

In other words, if trans women are women, then men can beat women in sport and male rapists can be housed in women’s prisons and everything is above board. It of course also relies on that faith-based position, an ‘inner sense’ of one’s gender. A gendered soul. And so, when your child plays with certain toys or struggles with their sexuality or puberty, that can be ‘solved’ by surgery and pharmaceuticals.

Starmer has found himself unable to define what a woman is or even to agree that only women have a cervix (instead saying it was ‘not right’ to say so and it was ‘something that shouldn’t be said’).

It is under his leadership that one of his MPs, Rosie Duffield, has effectively been frozen out of the party for her views that single sex spaces are important and that it is vital to define women as adult human females. His lack of support for her has arguably given a green light to various misogynists and activists to target her with endless abuse.

His shadow Justice Secretary David Lammy said of those defending women’s sex-based rights that they were, “dinosaurs” who want to “hoard rights”.

Meanwhile, former comedian Eddie Izzard is hoping to be a Labour MP for Sheffield Central, and recently said of Rosie Duffield’s concerns that she should, ‘join us in the 21st century’. Izzard, a man who claims to operate between ‘boy and girl’ mode but currently identifies as a gender fluid trans woman, only ever appears in films as a man, and yet sees no issue using women’s toilets.

So are the women, men, and an increasing number of parents concerned over this issue really just out of date dinosaurs? Should we be concerned about Labour’s stance on gender ideology?

The excuses are usually, ‘Oh but it’s just a fringe issue and surely once we’re in power we can change it’, or ‘It affects such a small number of people, it’s more important to just get the Tories out!’

The trouble for Sir Keir is that, for many this issue isn’t a political wrinkle or a little policy row to be ‘ironed out’ once they’re in power and the realism of government takes hold. This is a gaping fissure at the heart of his leadership and an indictment of his character.

This will be viewed by some as standing up for what is clearly right, providing protection and a voice to those who are silenced, about civil liberties and freedom of expression. For others, and perhaps crucially in elections, it’s simply about what most people would surely consider common sense.

In what looks like bowing to hectoring from ‘radical’ activists in his own party (and a desire to be seen ‘on the right side of history TM’), Starmer’s called for more hate crime legislation around ‘misgendering’, a stance that would place even more limits on speech and wildly inappropriate powers in the hands of the police.

He has confusingly asked for a more ‘respectful debate’, while firmly standing on one side of that debate, the side that shuts down the other’s chance to argue.

If Starmer finds it hard to stand up for women and children’s rights against what is essentially a noisy shrieking mob with banners and Twitter followings, what hope has he of leading a country? How would he deal with big business or world leaders? How would he deal with Putin?

Starmer is educated, and like many famous people, he didn’t hold these views until five minutes ago. How can voters trust a man who denies biological reality and does so merely to score points with an increasingly deranged and relatively small base? How can women trust someone who was so quick to give away their rights on an ideology based in narcissism, porn, and bad faith?

That doesn’t require them to vote Tory of course, and the character of Rishi Sunak may be an unknown quantity right now, but it may be enough to sway people from voting Labour.

For some, being unable to show backbone in this debate, or stand up for women being attacked and children being exploited, would seem a bad look that overrides lazy sloganeering.