If the polls are correct, Britain will have a Labour government in less than two weeks. Yet the party still can’t come clean on its stance on significant transgender issues. In fact, it increasingly appears as though Labour officials are being deliberately evasive to prevent voters from realising just how radical their plans are.
Take draft guidelines ‘banning’ children from being taught that there are more than two genders, for example. Those introduced under Britain’s nominal Conservative Party are vague—much like their flimsy guidelines for schools on whether gender-questioning pupils can ‘socially transition.’ But it seems Labour’s shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, believes they go too far.
Asked three times if she would keep the ban in place or ditch it, Phillipson refused to answer directly. Instead, she said: “There are trans people within society and their existence should be recognised.” Phillipson also criticised the draft guidelines for “drift[ing] far too much into partisan and unnecessary language.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer later suggested the opposite—that “I’m not in favour of ideology being taught in our schools,” adding: “That’s not on the agenda.” So why the suggestion from a Labour bigwig that current guidelines would be reviewed by a Labour government?
Following Phillipson’s comments, Conservative education secretary Gillian Keegan said Labour “would play politics with the lives of our children by ripping up guidance on gender questioning children, effectively allowing contested gender ideology to be taught in the classroom.” Despite its own mixed messaging prompting the confusion over this issue, a Labour official had the gall to respond that “the Tories are spending more time alleging things that aren’t in our manifesto than what’s actually in it.”
There has also been a lot of reporting over the weekend on Labour’s plans to make it easier to change gender. It is understood that Labour will make it easier for people to legally ‘transition’ by removing the need for them to prove they have lived as someone of their preferred gender for two years. Party officials say that this would “remove indignities for trans people who deserve recognition and acceptance,” according to The Times.
But Conservative equalities minister Kemi Badenoch has warned that the plan would create “loopholes for predators” because they would “unravel all the protections in the current system designed to protect women and girls.”
Badenoch’s comments came after Harry Potter author and former Labour Party donor J.K. Rowling wrote in an explosive political intervention that “as long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women fighting to retain the rights their foremothers thought were won for all time, I’ll struggle to support them.”
Labour, responding to a flurry of concerns, said that it would “ensure that robust provisions are in place to protect legitimate applications.” Britons might not have to wait long to see the results of all this.