A New Breed of Whitehall Quislings - Labour and the Law Abandon Transgender Brits

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

‘A woman is an adult female,’ Sir Keir Starmer declared last week following the Supreme Court’s ruling on the definition of a woman. One can only imagine how harrowing life has been as a member of the trans community since the decision was made. It represents a colossal step backwards for our trans community, and the consequences are already becoming clear. The Prime Minister’s support for this backwards ruling makes matters worse, as trans men and women are seeing their rights stripped from them with the government’s blessing. This has left many mystified as to what the purportedly progressive government stands for anymore. 

The supreme court ruled that gender is defined by biological sex following a lengthy and vitriolic legal campaign from TERF group For Women Scotland. After the verdict, Judge Lord Hodge declared that this should not be seen as ‘the victory of one side over another.’ It is difficult, though, to imagine that our trans community can feel this way. Less than two weeks after the hearing, their rights are being stripped away. The EHRC has issued new guidance, indicating that a trans man should not be permitted to use male facilities in public spaces, and vice versa. This guidance, shockingly, even extends to schools, potentially risking the deterioration of the already worrying mental health of the UK’s trans children. Unbelievably, the EHRC’s report also indicates that there exist circumstances where a trans person should not be allowed to use the bathroom of their birth sex either, potentially leaving a trans person with nowhere to go. The Trans community, long the most targeted group of the LGBTQ+ community in the UK, has been used as a political football for years already. Now we can see the repercussions of playing politics with the rights of an already marginalised group. 

I am old enough to remember a time when Keir Starmer opposed the view that ‘a woman is an adult female,’ as recently as 2021, in fact, he defended this view against now-independent MP Rose Duffield. Unfortunately, it has already reached a point in his premiership where this U-turn is no longer surprising. Even before becoming Prime Minister, his appointment of Wes Streeting as Health Secretary set off alarm bells, and in December he backed the ban of puberty blockers for under 18s with gender dysphoria. He appeared to prescribe them as a cause of the mental health crisis among the UK’s trans community, rather than the incessant weaponising of their rights by politicians such as himself. This court ruling and the Labour government’s response to it is the sad culmination of years of the political negligence of a community who were already among the most marginalised in the country. They must be left wondering if there is anywhere for them to go politically, after a party which once stood unwaveringly by their side has turned its back on them. 

The trans community is now part of a long list of groups who Keir Starmer has abandoned, and we are left wondering if our Prime Minister really believes in anything at all. In September they abandoned pensioners, with more than 9 million UK pensioners losing their winter fuel payments. In March, Rachel Reeves announced cuts to welfare to offset increased defence spending. The government continues to refuse to stop sending weapons to Israel in the midst of their barbaric campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank. Now with the government’s abandonment of the Trans community everywhere you look in Britain, you see people who have been betrayed by Keir Starmer’s Labour government. Many of these decisions come in the name of ‘tough decisions’ which were so resented when the Tories were in power. Looking back to his campaign to become Labour leader and his promises to introduce a wealth tax and abolish tuition fees, Starmer appears to be a completely different person. He now represents nothing other than the maintenance of the status quo. He is showing a remarkable arrogance for a man who occupies No.10 largely because of the extraordinary unpopularity of the Conservative government which preceded his. Nothing has changed in the UK, he appears to think that things will simply improve of their own volition and that he is free to abandon the most marginalised communities due to his huge, but fragile, parliamentary majority. He has left these communities politically homeless, and it is no wonder that we are sleepwalking towards Reform and fascism. Starmer’s response to the Supreme Court’s decision has us asking just one question: which of his ‘principles’ will he abandon next?