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........