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Keir Starmer owes Rosie Duffield an apology
Labour might have shifted its policy on trans, but the treatment of Left-wing feminists can’t be forgotten
Madeline Grant
There are a great many scenarios in which you wouldn’t want to hear from Sir Keir Starmer. Chewing your ear off in a smoking area at 3am about his time as Director of Public Prosecutions. Or in the middle of a corporate ice-breaker in which he somehow manages to drop in the fact that his father was a toolmaker. Or even giving a speech from the steps of Downing Street. But there is one area where I really would like to hear from the Leader of the Opposition. Namely, to apologise to Rosie Duffield and so many other women in his party, who’ve been vilified for expressing an opinion that is now official Labour policy.
In reversing its policy on gender self-ID, as unveiled by shadow women and equalities secretary Anneliese Dodds this week, Labour seems to be belatedly acknowledging that biological sex is not some random construct invented by bigots, but a manifestation of physical reality that remains vitally relevant in how women are treated and spaces managed.
The facts haven’t changed – merely the politics. After the SNP’s self-ID debacle, public opinion has shifted on this issue, so much that Labour felt compelled to follow suit. But the party’s pivot comes embarrassingly late in the day; following the closure of the Tavistock clinic, the exposure of Stonewall, the evolving scandal of the charity Mermaids and its failed legal bid to strip the gay and lesbian group LGB Alliance of its charitable status.
Any of these moments might have – indeed, ought to have – prompted self-reflection. But it is only now, having spent years presiding over an environment in which gender-critical feminists were routinely hounded, that Labour proposes policies those feminists supported – and without a twitch of contrition. Are Starmer and Dodds really to be congratulated for finally reading the room?
Duffield has endured a hellish few years. Popular and capable, she remains Labour’s only Kent MP, even increasing her majority in 2019 in an area of the country which has traditionally been true-blue to the core. Under normal circumstances, this would surely win her promotion to the shadow front bench. Yet Duffield remains as isolated within her party as she is by electoral geography.
Matthew Doyle, Labour’s head of communications, was recently caught on camera mocking Duffield for spending too much time “hanging out with J K Rowling” – as though issues like sex-based rights were frivolous hobby-horses rather than fundamental matters of concern to the public.
The boorish behaviour is especially noticeable on the floor of the Commons. While Duffield spoke in a debate about self-ID in Scotland, several colleagues visibly scoffed or heckled her. Ben Bradshaw, who likes to present himself as one of the “grown-ups in the room” bellowed “Rubbish!” as Duffield – a domestic abuse survivor – expressed fears about the future of women’s refuges and other single-sex spaces.
She is not the only victim of such unparliamentary outbursts. Earlier this year, a puce-faced Lloyd Russell-Moyle crossed the floor, in an apparent attempt to intimidate the Tory MP Miriam Cates, as she voiced similar concerns about unisex toilets. Starmer has never directly denounced any of this, only condemning uncivil behaviour in the broadest, most non-committal terms.
Duffield was even forced to miss the 2021 Brighton Labour Party conference amid death threats, and later spoke of Labour HQ’s cowardly, flabby response. “It is obsessive harassment. Neither the Labour Party nor either the former or current Leader or the Whips’ Office have done anything at all to stop it, to offer me any support, help or legal assistance.”
At last year’s Tory Party conference, I had the pleasure of meeting the indomitable Bev Jackson and Kate Harris, co-founders of LGB Alliance. If you haven’t heard of them, Bev and Kate are a pair of lesbian campaigners, who are, if some sections of the Left are to be believed, the devil incarnate. I didn’t see them in Liverpool, however, because the LGB Alliance had been denied a stall at the Labour Party conference, along with the Labour Women’s Declaration and several other feminist groups.
This fact alone should be far more embarrassing to the Left than it is; just as it ought to be that Duffield finds more support from Tory ministers such as Alister Jack and Kemi Badenoch than on her own benches, or that Suzanne Moore and Hadley Freeman receive a warmer welcome in the pages of the Daily Telegraph or Sunday Times than they now would in The Guardian.
In all of this, stated and revealed preferences matter. In public, Starmer calls for a “respectful debate”. In private, he fails to discipline those who intimidate gender-critical feminists. Meanwhile, Labour remains a paid-up member of Stonewall; Starmer shared a promo video featuring him and Stonewall chair Iain Anderson just this month.
Labour’s concession to biological reality may be a step in the right direction – and not a moment too soon. But if and when that speech from No 10 ever does happen, can it really be trusted to stay the course on this (or anything else), when it’s taken so long to grow even a scintilla of a spine? Perhaps it’s a case of, as Margaret Thatcher said: “If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”