Finally a response from Keir Starmer to SC ruling.

[LadyBracknellsHandbagg]

A woman is an adult female, and the court has made that absolutely clear.
I actually welcome the judgment because I think it gives real clarity. It allows those that have got to draw up guidance to be really clear about what that guidance should say.
So I think it’s important that we see the judgment for what it is. It’s a welcome step forward.
It’s real clarity in an area where we did need clarity, I’m pleased it’s come about.
We need to move and make sure that we now ensure that all guidance is in the right place according to that judgment.

Thoughts?

Good points about private members bills @Merrymouse - reassuring, thank you.

Now can you do Angela Rayner becoming party leader?

The wholesale rewriting of history is annoying, but it's not just annoying. It would be much better for MPs to treat us like adults and say something like "I went into this with the best of intentions, I deferred to Stonewall, but it turned out to be more complicated and some of my assumptions were wrong." Wes Streeting has done a bit of that, but I can't think of anyone else who has.

The trouble with a reverse ferret on this is that it's too easy to ask - were you lying then or are you lying now? It makes MPs look shifty at best. Ask Penny Mordaunt how it worked out for her.

So I'd really like them to show their workings. Bridget Phillipson declaring that we have always been at war with Eurasia doesn't work.

Also a bit unsettled at Starmer's spokesman saying that "TWANW when looking at the Equality Act" - am I paranoid to think this is legalese for "the SC has landed us with this ruling and we have to comply, but we'll look for ways to give it the narrowest scope possible"?

She is fundamentally a politician and saw what happened to Sturgeon.

Dentons were right - it’s difficult to argue Stonelaw in public.

It took a tribunal to confirm that you can (thank you MF!) and sometimes the general public take no notice, but you just can’t avoid medical scandals like the Tavistock or the consequences of ‘inclusive’ policies in prisons and NHS staff changing rooms - or most obviously sport.

I don't find that quite as reassuring but thank you for trying.

It scares the crap out of me that she signed that pledge while running for Deputy Leader - and won. (Even Starmer had the nous to give it a swerve if I recall correctly.) Until or unless she publicly distances herself from it, I don't think I'll ever get past it.

IIRC all the women running for leader or deputy leader signed that daft pledge, either because they agreed with it or they felt under social pressure to do so.

I believe Starmer didn't because his campaign strategy was to do what Morgan McSweeney told him, and McSweeney was opposed to signing anything that (a) looked mad to the median voter and (b) put Starmer under an obligation to a small fringe group.

I am not a fan of Morgan McSweeney, but he has his uses.

(I have an idea Richard Burgon also didn't sign. I wouldn't call Burgon a deep thinker, but he's been active on the hard left long enough to know that signing pledges calling for expulsions could come back to bite him and his allies.)

I came across this yesterday and it reminded me of Kier

Apparently it can cause a concussion. Which explains a lot!

Also a bit unsettled at Starmer's spokesman saying that "TWANW when looking at the Equality Act" - am I paranoid to think this is legalese for "the SC has landed us with this ruling and we have to comply, but we'll look for ways to give it the narrowest scope possible"?

Yes this part stuck out to me too.

Sorry just meant to quote that part of @SionnachRuadh post about when looking at the Equality Act

Ok - so alternative scenario.

Labour decides to replace leader before the next election - and decide to devote their remaining time in office to an electorally toxic piece of legislation.

The Conservatives and Reform rub their hands because the Labour majority is big but shallow. I still think only a minority of Labour MPs support the legislation, if for no other reason than they want to keep their jobs.

I think this is consistent with his position that the law creates reality. Previously his position was the law makes some men with a GRC into women. Now his position is it doesn't for the areas covered by the Equality Act. Which is nearly everything the GRC covers and everything that matters in terms of women's rights.

If the law was that the sky was green he would say the sky is green. That's the quality of mind we are dealing with in KS.

There is a great clip of today’s PMQ’s circulating on X. The cameraman switches to Rosie Duffield when Keir fails to apologise that she was hounded out of the Labour Party. She is wearing a purple triceratops(?) badge on her jacket too.

Sometimes the law does create reality, so the law can change your status as an employee or land owner or rights as a parent, even though facts haven’t changed.

I do sympathise with his POV, because that is the approach you have to take as a lawyer.

The problem is that he is now a Prime Minister.

I don't think those examples are comparable. They are just dealing with your legal status in one very particular area which is regulated by law - such as what your employment or property rights are.

That is nothing like saying the law can literally turn you into another category of human being, which has always been defined by literal biological sex, to the extent that you now take on the characteristics of that sex ( such as being less likely to be a sex offender than your actual sex so women, apparently, don't need to worry about you in their changing rooms).

KS was not previously saying that the law says men can be legally defined as women, but we can see now that is creating problems so we need to look at this again. He was effectively saying the law makes men into women and that's fine and dandy and we should all agree with it. How else to interpret what he was letting happen in his party and conferences and his public scolding of Rosie for stating the truth that only women have cervixes?

I think he was saying ‘I can hide behind this legal definition, and make the political calculation that that will do me less harm than clarifying my position’.

Like many men, I think he lacks the interest to take time to understand the issue, and made the political calculation that Rosie Duffield was disposable.

The Supreme Court and the threat of Reform have now changed the political calculation.

I'm not sure it's a lack of interest - there's someone I know who's very passionate about his TRA position, and far from unintelligent (someone not a million miles from KS's social milieu as it happens) and I can honestly say it's not that he lacks interest, it's wilful ignorance.

He's always banging on about toilets and how Julie Bindel wants to force gender nonconforming people out of toilets. I've said repeatedly, toilets are not the beginning and end of the issue. You've been active in supporting rape survivors, are you honestly saying they aren't entitled to single sex peer support? You play sports, are you saying with a straight face that there's no performance gap between the sexes? And yet it always circles back to his lovely friends who just want to pee.

It's as if, having decided we're on the wrong side of history, he blocks his ears to anything we say. And this is where we get the old saying that if you only know your own side of the argument you don't even know that. I know all his arguments and he knows none of mine. He'd be a much better advocate for his own position if he spent an hour listening to Helen Joyce on a podcast.

I think there's a similar thing with KS. He didn't just think Rosie was expendable, he thought she was wrong, she was in the camp of the morally impure, so he unheard everything she said.

It's a common approach to politics on the left. I don't think it's working out very well for him.

Legally, the only rights trans people have now is NOT to be harassed or discriminated against because they have a GRC or identify as trans. Which is fine; because unlike their rabid activists, we’ve never wanted to harass anyone. They have no rights TO anything, and now gender identity is sort of like religion - you can’t use it as a reason to discriminate, but neither can you inflict it on others and insist they indulge in it with you.

Legally the Supreme Court is not bound by its own decisions so in theory they could rule against this in future, but I think they’re very unlikely to do so anytime soon. Regardless, we will always need to be vigilant now Pandora’s Box has opened.

My personal view is that now we need to actually have this law ENFORCED - as in, not allow businesses and corporations to ride roughshod over women because they’ve ’done their own assessments’ and decided that trans can still count as women under their own systems, or sneakily change wording so trans can be included where it shouldn’t.

I will wait to see what Labour propose later in the year but if it isn’t strong enough I’m ready to continue writing, donating and doing whatever if necessary to enforce this decision.

Sadly my belief is that until gender identity has been thoroughly debunked and treated flat earth theory, we will always have some kind of fight on our hands. I don’t believe that trans people can ever really ‘exist’ (as in, say they ARE a woman/man when they’re not) without a continual push to give them back what they see as ‘rightfully theirs’. They will not stop here, they will always be misogynists who will use their minority status to bully women and exact some kind of revenge.

Sadly my belief is that until gender identity has been thoroughly debunked and treated flat earth theory, we will always have some kind of fight on our hands. I don’t believe that trans people can ever really ‘exist’ (as in, say they ARE a woman/man when they’re not) without a continual push to give them back what they see as ‘rightfully theirs’. They will not stop here, they will always be misogynists who will use their minority status to bully women and exact some kind of revenge

Yes, we really need to get back to a sensible position that gender dysphoria is a condition, not an identity. That most young people develop out of it as they go through puberty. That a small minority have settled dysphoria into adult. That the first line of treatment for people with settled dysphoria should always be to find ways to manage that dysphoria without hormones or surgery, but that if this fails then hormones/ surgery are a last resort option for those most severely affected. But that society recognises that this cosmetic altering of appearance is a medical treatment and not a change of sex.

And that people who wish to be gender non-conforming are just people who wish to be gender non-conforming and this is a lifestyle choice that anyone is free to have in a free society.

You've summarised very well my own lines of thought over the past few days.

To some extent this might hinge on whatever guidelines are issued by the EHRC. Historically they've been next-to-useless, but with Falkner at the helm they seem to have received a belated dose of common sense. For those of us, me included, who work in captured institutions, it would be useful to keep an eye on their published policies on inclusion and to report any breaches to the EHRC. The waters are muddied by the fact that these people can, but don't have to, provide mixed gender and single sex facilities.

For eg., one such instutition has published policies on transgender and sexual orientation equality, but nothing on sex-based equality. It is a matter of their policy that transgender individuals must be addressed by their stipulated names and pronouns. To do otherwise falls under their (Stonewall's) definition of transphobia. They also encourage people to use the facilities that best fit their gender expression. I would expect the latter statement, at least, to change.

I know of another institution who posted in horror after the judgement in full support of their trans staff, but saying nothing about women. They have suggested they will revise their policies once EHRC guidance comes through, but in the meantime here are numerous sources of support for trans people. No supporting words, absolutely nothing, was said in support of women. This material was posted on their staff intranet and is not in the public domain.

You have to think, surely, that the cases involving NHS Fife and the Darlington nurses will fall flat on their arses after this ruling, albeit the law hasn't changed in the slightest but has merely been clarified - as if that was needed. How can they not? But after the past few years nothing about this shit show would surprise me.

About to dig again in support of the Sarah Summers vs. the Sussex rape crisis case - who surely should be in a stronger position than she was on the day she started her action. It's taken a disgraceful four years for that case to be listed, with the one hopeful benefit that last week's ruling might help her arrive at a positive outcome.

In the meantime I think we need to be vigilant and keep digging in support of important cases like FWSs', Sarah's, and others. Like you, I don't think this is over.

It could happen but because it's against the party line and would be embarrassing that precisely why an extreme amount of pressure is going to be placed to prevent this possibility from occurring.

Does anyone know how much scope there is for members to change party policy?

I have a vague idea that they can vote on party policy at conference, but assume that they can't control policy, otherwise Starmer would never be able to do things like maintain the 2 child benefit cap.

Not strictly true.
Trans people also have their legal sex based rights and this should not be forgotten.
This is particularly relevant to females who identify as trans as it applies more often to females than males. Males retain their ability to inherit titles too.
This right also works in ensuring healthcare is done properly too rather than putting doctors into a daft position and putting trans people more at risk from errors.

Consider what 'additional' rights women have?

None because actually single sex spaces are also about preventing harassment and maintaining fairness ultimately.

Because the law is about balancing needs. Not a hierarchy of needs.

They couldn't do anything much outside conference. Then the unions could put something forward or the members could put something forward to a vote.

Now given that women struggled to get anything tabled that's an interesting prospect in reverse.

The party membership tends to be more extreme than the parliamentary party and the parliamentary party tends to be more extreme than the average Labour voter.

The problem with this approach is it can't be done in secret. It has to be done out in the open. If the unions decide they want to break ranks and back a law change which supports certain things it won't play well. Headlines like 'unions support jailed rapists' don't go well. And the unions also want to stay in power - the prospect of Reform getting in, raises all sorts of questions about the power and influence of unions.

The party membership is another matter. If you didn't want the party to look batshit you'd do everything you could to make sure votes on the subject somehow didn't meet party rules etc. Basically some shannigans.

But yes this is Labour's Brexit problem - with it vulnerable to party infighting and looking ridiculous.

That's why the parliamentary party won't want to go anywhere near anything on the subject. And any Labour MP who does will be getting visits from whatever creeping crawly Labour has that replaced Tory Gavin Williamson's Tarantula Cronus... (They'd get a stern talking to by the chief whip).