Gender ideology was perhaps the last topic which Labour wanted to be front and centre of the election campaign but public opinion and JK Rowling are forcing them to address it. While their proposals on tax and spend have attracted much scrutiny, until the bestselling author intervened this weekend sex and gender had been consigned to the periphery of the campaign. Close analysis of Labour’s manifesto reveals that it is on ‘the culture wars’ – from transgenderism to restitution to a proposed new ‘Race Equality Act’– where they will be the most distinctive, even radical.
There can be no doubt that the landscape surrounding the thorny issue of gender ideology has shifted dramatically over the past year. Many people who were once cowed into silence by a policy of ‘no debate’ now feel free to speak out.
Starmer has vowed that if elected, he will end the ‘divisive’ culture war
Labour’s apparent rhetorical position seems similarly to have moved in a less avant-garde direction. In 2023, Sir Keir Starmer claimed that ‘99.9 per cent of women haven’t got a penis’. One year on, he appears to have reconsidered the issue and concluded that ‘biologically, a woman is with a vagina and a man is with a penis’. This is a step forward for the party that supported gender self-declaration for transgender people under Jeremy Corbyn. However, key questions about the complexity of this policy area remain.
As JK Rowling pointed out last week, Starmer continues to resort to ‘familiar trans activist talking points’ when questioned. His words echo what Peter Mandelson once said of Tony Blair – that he has a certain ‘charming ambiguity’: Starmer told one audience member that he agreed with the comments of Blair last week ‘on the biology’ but claimed this ‘doesn’t help on the gender’. Women should be concerned that Starmer still seems to view gender as a distinct category, untethered to sex. Would the Labour leader still admit biological men who have undergone gender reassignment surgery into the category of ‘woman’?
Similar ambiguities and contradictions exist in their manifesto. The Labour manifesto, like its Conservative counterpart, commits the party to full implementation of the Cass Review. This is welcome; future gender-distressed children must never again suffer at the hands of an NHS captured by activists. However, other manifesto promises on this topic, such as the proposed ‘trans-inclusive conversion therapy ban’, call into question whether Labour is really committed to implementing Cass’s recommendations.
The party’s commitments on conversion therapy come after much lobbying from activists. As the Conservatives found when their proposals to this effect were defeated in both houses of parliament, it is not possible to legislate effectively on conversion therapy without criminalising parents, teachers and doctors who wish to have exploratory conversations about gender distress and its causes. Dr Cass warns in the very report Labour has promised to implement that such legislation is feared by professionals – and is unlikely to work.
This contradictory theme is a running thread throughout the Labour manifesto. Whilst it makes many of the right sounds on gender, women are left wondering how individual policies will bear out the rhetoric. Labour’s manifesto commits to supporting the ‘implementation of [The Equality Act’s] single-sex exceptions’. But as Policy Exchange first identified in 2023, there is currently an open legal question about whether ‘single-sex’ exceptions in the Equality Act include trans individuals with a gender recognition certificate. That said, one wonders why the Conservative party has waited until their manifesto launch to commit to clarifying that the Act refers to ‘biological sex’: it is undeniably the case that the erosion of women’s spaces happened on their watch.
Ambiguity in this area is of particular significance due to Labour’s plans to ‘modernise, simplify and reform the intrusive and outdated gender recognition law’. The Gender Recognition Act offers a very small number of safeguards before a man is given the necessary paperwork to enter certain female spaces. Women across the UK are understandably fearful of how these certificates will be abused should they become even easier to obtain.
Labour’s treatment of Rosie Duffield MP, who has found herself at the centre of this increasingly divisive debate, may be representative of their broader plans. While Labour did withdraw the whip from Lord Cashman just over a week ago after he described Duffield’s decision to abstain from hustings after receiving death threats as ‘frit, or lazy’, the party’s support for her only goes so far. Despite being their only elected MP in Kent in the last Parliament, she was notably not invited to the Labour campaign launch in the very same county.
In government, it is not possible to fudge this issue. Labour must accept that some of their decisions will upset either their activist base, or the electorate at large. Bridget Philipson’s comments on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg signal that underneath sound rhetoric may lie a more adventurous agenda. The shadow education secretary believes that the draft transgender schools guidance, informed by Dr Cass’ interim report, drifts ‘far too much into partisan and unnecessary language’. She would not answer whether Labour will junk the much-needed guidance, but her comments should leave us wary of Labour’s approach to this issue.
Transgender ideology might be the area of greatest focus this election, but it is not the only significant area of departure for a potential future Labour government. The Race Equality Act and proposed mandatory pay gap reporting will introduce new regulations that will stoke further division between different groups, while creating even more red tape for businesses. The trans debate may be dominating the airwaves, but there is no doubt that from heritage and history to the nuts and bolts of employment law, Labour is planning to make its mark.
Whatever happens on 4 July, uncertainty hangs over the shape of our national debate on culture in the widest sense. Starmer has vowed that if elected, he will end the ‘divisive’ culture war. These major questions aren’t going away, and the next government must have the courage to stand up for women’s sex-based rights, however ‘divisive’ this may be.
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