It’s Election Day Eve and the likely victors are already planning for the future. Mr S wrote today about how Sir Keir’s top team have been trying to cosy up to Donald Trump – but it’s not just foreign policy they’ve been considering. Closer to home it transpires that Labour is considering appointing a new chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) – and it might ruffle just a few feathers…
Starmer’s army want outgoing Labour veteran Harriet Harman to take on the top job at the equalities watchdog, the Times has revealed today. Currently the position is held by Baroness Falkner of Margravine. While her current contract is due to run out on 30 November, it was thought that women and equalities minister Kemi Badenoch would extend it if the Tories remained in government.
Baroness Falkner has been a vocal women’s rights campaigner and a firm advocate of single-sex spaces, having previously advised the Conservative government to improve on legal protections for biological women. She remained in post after previously being investigated over allegations of bullying and harassment, which her allies slammed as a ‘witch hunt’. Oo er.
On the other hand, Harman oversaw the introduction of the Equality Act under Gordon Brown’s Labour government – which has since been criticised for having too vague a definition of sex. The Labour stalwart also takes a rather different view on the definition of a woman, believing that ‘women are women who are born women, but women are also women who are trans women’. And on same-sex spaces, Harman’s views are, again, fairly distinct from those of Baroness Falkner. She proclaimed in 2022 that:
I think that we also need to recognise that in some respects there need to be same-sex services, which can be delivered and you can’t have a blanket exclusion of trans women, but in certain circumstances, in narrow circumstances, you can restrict those services.
Riddle us that…
It would be a controversial move and would no doubt ensure gender remains a prominent issue for the next government. Starmer has already been slammed by JK Rowling over his ‘dismissive and often offensive’ approach to concerns raised by gender-critical feminists and one of his own colleagues, Rosie Duffield, has been left rather unimpressed by his flip-flopping on women’s rights. The trans debate is one that will continue to dog Sir Keir for a while yet…
Listen to Megan McElroy speak to Katy Balls and Sonia Sodha about Labour’s women problem on Coffee House Shots:
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