Is it time for feminists to turn to the Tories?

Should feminists like me hold their nose and team up with the Tories? It’s a dilemma many of those concerned about the transgender debate are wrestling with. Labour has spectacularly failed women when it comes to protecting their rights. The Green party seems more interested in protecting transgender rights than saving the environment. And the Lib Dems want to make it even easier for men to get government-issued certificates declaring themselves to be women. The Conservatives are hardly an enticing option, but are they the party that is best placed to speak up for women?

In the July election, Labour had my vote – but only just. My determination to get the Tories out trumped my nervousness about Keir Starmer’s wishy-washiness on whether transgender rights mattered more than women’s. But for me, and other feminists, that support is not unconditional. Already some feminists are doing the unthinkable – and turning to the Tories.

This migration to the Conservatives among feminists would have once seemed impossible. Women’s rights activists in this country traditionally sit on the political left. Many of us believe that the only way to tackle inequality is to change the structures that allow it to flourish; patriarchy, capitalism and the intersection between them are the real issue. Feminists think that, in order to safeguard women’s rights in a sustainable manner, we must get to the root cause of the problem.

For years, the Labour party was a natural home for left-leaning feminists. But Keir Starmer risks losing these voters if he doesn’t reassure women quickly that their rights are safe under Labour.

The truth is that Starmer’s party has let down women by capitulating to those denying the biological reality of sex. Labour has promoted gender ideology at the expense of women’s rights and women’s safety. The party has failed to resist the ideological capture of British institutions and it ignored the relentless harassment endured by the women who stood up to try and protect their sex-based rights.

Labour did not even protect one of its own MPs, Rosie Duffield, as she faced threats and abuse for daring to speak up for the rights of women. Duffield, the MP for Canterbury, was so appalled at the way women had been treated by her party – and about what she called ‘the sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice’ that has plagued Labour – that she resigned the whip. It’s hard to blame her. Starmer failed Duffield. Will he also fail feminists who share her concerns?

The reality of biological sex matters and not just in sports and prisons. Biological sex is crucial in science and health, in the workplace, in universities, and when we are collecting data and statistics. Biological sex matters because, for instance, recording the gender identity of a rapist skews not only data but also leads to further trauma and distress for the victims.

When Duffield quit the party, Labour’s Nadia Whittome MP wrote on X/Twitter: ‘No matter your views on her stated reasons for quitting, Rosie Duffield has made a political career out of dehumanising one of the most marginalised groups in society. She should never have been allowed the privilege of resigning. Labour should have withdrawn the whip long ago.’

These sentiments make many women like me concerned; we fear that Labour may fail to stop the relentless adoption of gender ideology. If the party is to retain the feminist vote, Labour needs to get real about biological sex.

Feminists must not, of course, forget that the Tories have their own chequered history in the gender debate. The Conservatives have hardly helped reassure worried women on the transgender question. It was Tory MP Maria Miller who, when she was chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee, kicked off this toxic culture war. In 2016, Miller chaired an inquiry into transgender equality. It strongly recommended that the UK legally adopt the self-definition of ‘gender identity’, which could render legal sex irrelevant in comparison. The committee stated that official recognition of gender should be based on self-declaration, rather than what it called a ‘medicalised’ assessment. Miller signed off the report advising a change to the Equality Act (replacing the protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’ with ‘gender identity’), suggesting that an individual’s feeling of ‘gender’ should take precedence over biological sex.

Feminists complained loudly, but Miller dismissed women’s fury about the erosion of single-sex provision in refuges as ‘extraordinary’ bigotry. At the time, Miller said the only backlash to her report was from ‘individuals purporting to be feminists’.

While it’s obvious that the Conservatives could have done more to halt the erosion of women’s rights, they at least – if somewhat belatedly – appear to have woken up to women’s concerns on this subject. The Tory leadership contenders are an unappealing bunch, but it seems more likely that Kemi Badenoch, rather than Keir Starmer, will speak up for women.

The Labour party, of which I was a member until Jeremy Corbyn became leader, has spectacularly failed women on the gender issue. I can’t bear the thought of teaming up with the Tories. But unless Starmer acts quickly to calm our fears that he doesn’t care about womens’ rights, some feminists might consider doing the unthinkable.