By Andrew Godfrey-Collins.
Starmer’s Labour: the most anti-LGBT+ government since Thatcher?
Some questions Southampton’s Labour MPs need to answer on their government’s LGBT+ record.
A year into a Labour government, things have actually got far worse for the LGBT+ community, not better, than they were under the Conservatives. (If that claim makes you splutter with indignant disbelief, you should definitely read this article to the end). That’s because while the Conservatives engaged in a lot of nasty rhetoric and tried to stoke up a culture war, especially against trans people, it is Labour who over the past year have actually done all the awful things the Conservatives merely threatened to. As a result, Labour has been banned from marching at multiple prides across the UK – including our own Southampton Pride.
Southampton has two Labour MPs, Satvir Kaur (representing Southampton Test, my own constituency) and Darren Paffey (representing Southampton Itchen). They’ve both spoken in support of LGBT+ rights before and attended prides in Southampton in previous years. I had a long conversation with Darren at one pride event just before the 2024 general election, where I raised some of the community’s concerns. And I’ve had extensive correspondence with Satvir on the same topic. My impression is that both Satvir and Darren, at a personal level, are sincere in their support for LGBT+ people. Over the past few months, they’ve both met with local trans organisations and community members, and Satvir has submitted written questions to ministers on their behalf. They’re certainly not in the same league as some of their awful colleagues in the Labour Party, like Jonathan Hinder MP, who recently called Anne Widdecombe ‘woke’ (I repeat: he called Anne Widdecombe woke!) for her view that at least some trans women prisoners should not be housed in the male estate.
Still, neither Darren nor Satvir have acknowledged that their own party is the primary source of the problems currently facing LGBT+ people, and especially trans people, in the UK. Darren assured me when we spoke last year that the new government would be strongly pro-LGBT+, while Satvir in a more recent conversation would concede only that Labour has got some of its ‘messaging’ wrong on LGBT+ issues.
So at this year’s Southampton Pride, I was hoping I might be able to catch one or both of them for a more in-depth conversation about the alarming developments since Labour came to power (although the party is banned from marching under its own banners, MPs and other party members can still attend pride as individuals). I’d produced a leaflet detailing Labour’s shocking recent LGBT+ record, provocatively titled ‘Starmer’s Labour: The Most Anti-LGBT+ Government since Thatcher’, and hoped I could pin Satvir and/or Darren down on whether they support or oppose their government’s concrete policy positions on gender recognition, trans healthcare and so on. Would they apologise on Labour’s behalf? Or perhaps even commit to standing up to their party leadership over its anti-LGBT+ stance?
Unfortunately, Satvir couldn’t be there as she was about to give birth, while Darren attended but I wasn’t able to find him in the crowd. So I didn’t get a chance to speak to them in person. If I had, here are some of the issues I would have raised with them.
Gender recognition, the Supreme Court ruling and the EHRC
Just a few years ago, Labour was still pledging that it would demedicalise the demeaning process of obtaining a gender recognition certificate, so that trans people could update their paperwork by statutory declaration as in other countries. Then Labour U-turned on that pledge, just like it has on so many others, and had the gall to claim that ‘responsible politics is not about doing what is easy, it’s about doing what is right,’ even as it did precisely the opposite. And since the election, even the plans for watered-down reforms short of self-declaration have been shelved.
Things got really bad after the recent Supreme Court ruling, which declared that trans women are recognised as men and trans men as women for the purposes of the Equality Act. This legally flawed ruling is bad enough by itself. But just to make matters even worse, it was immediately seized upon by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) as an excuse to launch interim guidelines calling on providers to exclude trans people from spaces and services they’ve been using without problems for years, something that goes beyond what is required by the Supreme Court ruling. A recent Trans Actual study, Trans Segregation in Practice, reveals the devastating impact the implementation of these interim guidelines has already had on trans people and even some cis people who’ve been misidentified as trans. Journalist Ian Dunt has written in detail on the problems with both the guidance and the EHRC.
Senior Labour figures responded to this ruling not by empathising with trans people for the distress and alarm they felt, but instead by declaring that it means that trans women are not women – something that is not even legally correct, as for purposes other than the Equality Act trans women are still recognised as women. Then Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood (who, incidentally, has expressed sympathy for protesters against LGBT-inclusive RSE in schools and for J. K. Rowling’s gender-critical views) said it was absolutely unacceptable to criticise the recent Supreme Court ruling.
In a personal response to me, Satvir stressed that MPs cannot criticise the ruling due to the separation of parliament and the judiciary. But that’s just dodging the issue: all the ruling does is establish what the law is currently deemed to be. As MPs, Satvir and Darren are lawmakers: they could help pass legislation to restore to trans people the recognition, rights, and protections they enjoyed de facto for years. So I would ask our MPs: will you push for that to happen? Or are you just going to toe the party line?
Another way that the government has tried to duck its responsibility is by saying it is simply following guidance from the EHRC, which is supposed to be an independent equalities watchdog. But the EHRC chair is appointed by the government. The current chair, the widely criticized Baroness Falkner, was originally appointed by none other than anti-LGBT+ culture warrior, Liz Truss! Inexplicably, she was then reappointed by the current Labour government and it is under her leadership that the EHRC has pursued its anti-trans agenda.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the Labour government has now appointed another gender-critical figure, Mary-Ann Stephenson, as her replacement – overruling the public recommendation of both the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Women and Equalities Committee. Which will only serve to further undermine the EHRC’s credibility among LGBT+ people.
There are now concerns that the government will try to rush through statutory EHRC guidelines without any scrutiny from MPs. An open letter has been organised to demand that MPs be allowed a vote.
So, Darren and Satvir: do you support or oppose the appointment of Mary-Ann Stephenson as the new EHRC chair? And will you push for full scrutiny of the future EHRC guidelines and commit to vote against them if they would exclude trans people from public life?
Healthcare
The Labour government has uncritically endorsed the flawed, discredited Cass Review. Against international best practice and evidence, it has made the Tories’ temporary ban on puberty blockers for trans children permanent (even though puberty blockers are still permitted for treating cis children with certain medical conditions) and severely restricted gender healthcare for young trans people. The campaign group Trans Kids Deserve Better have highlighted the impact this has had on trans kids’ mental health and the threat it poses to principles of informed consent and bodily autonomy.
The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, supports segregation of trans patients in hospitals and has expressed sympathy for groups advocating conversion practices. Under his watch, GPs have increasingly been refusing hormone prescriptions to trans people, which can have serious mental and physical health consequences, the NHS has instructed GPs to refuse blood tests to some trans children and refer parents to safeguarding and a ban has been introduced on young trans people being able to obtain hormone therapy outside the NHS. Streeting has also repeatedly spread falsehoods about trans people in the media: for example, the false claims that the practice history of doctors who transition to a new legal gender would not be disclosed to patients, that the NHS no longer uses the term ‘women’ (an untruth Streeting repeated in The Sun of all places, which I will not link to here) and that LGBT+ activists are trying to ban the word ‘breastfeeding’. As a result of his (ideologically or perhaps careerist-driven?) seeming crusade against trans people, Streeting was named ‘Villain of the Year’ by trans media organisation What the Trans.
Darren and Satvir: do you endorse the Cass Review – or have you taken the time to inform yourself of the numerous criticisms of its methodology? What have you done to stand up for trans people’s access to healthcare? What steps have you taken to oppose Wes Streeting’s deeply irresponsible actions as Health Secretary?
Education
Both Keir Starmer and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson support a policy of schools outing trans children to their parents. Any queer person knows just how harmful that could be if the parents are not accepting of their child’s identity. Many young queer people will initially want to explore their identity in safe spaces outside the family; this policy functions to drive them into the closet instead.
Labour’s most outrageous schools policy came very recently, when it released its own version of Thatcher’s Section 28. The original Section 28 was a notorious piece of legislation passed in the 1980s during the moral panic about gay people, which forbade the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ in educational settings. It had a chilling effect, turning schools into hostile environments where students and teachers alike felt afraid to discuss gay identity and relationships.
Labour’s new Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education guidance directly parallels this by banning the promotion of ‘gender identity’ and ‘social transition’ in schools. All the examples given in the guidance are directed against teachers being able to teach about trans identities in a way that is inclusive and affirmative: to use an analogy, it is as if guidance were to ban teachers from teaching as fact that everyone has a sexual orientation and that coming out as gay can alleviate feelings of distress or discomfort that come from denying who you are. The guidance also requires schools to indoctrinate children with an incorrect account of the law that ignores the legal status conferred by a Gender Recognition Certificate and uses the legally undefined term ‘biological sex’. The new rules also erase any reference to ‘trans children’ or ‘trans young people’.
Pride in Education has launched an open letter, signed by public figures such as Alan Cumming, Stephen Fry and Kate Nash, highlighting the alarming consequences of the new guidelines and calling for the changes to be reversed. One of my teacher friends fears it might mean they could get in trouble for using trans pupils’ correct pronouns or names if that is regarded as promoting ‘social transition’. As with the original Section 28, the harm goes beyond what’s technically allowed or disallowed by the guidelines: it’s enough for teachers and schools to worry that something might not be allowed for them to be frightened into unsupportive behaviour. And it’s their trans pupils who will suffer.
So Darren and Satvir: do you support or oppose Labour’s New Section 28?
And the list goes on …
There are far more examples that could be given. For instance, under Labour, the CPS introduced guidelines that put trans people at risk of prosecution if they do not disclose their gender identity before having sex – and now we’ve seen a trans woman found guilty of assault for doing just that.
And besides the all-out assault on trans people’s rights and dignity, Starmer’s Labour has frequently shown contempt for the LGBT+ community more widely. A few years back, Starmer was widely criticised for giving his Easter message from a church whose pastor has made deeply homophobic comments – only to then do it again in a subsequent year. He once staged a meeting with LGBT+ community members (several of whom, commentators were quick to point out, looked suspiciously similar to assorted local Labour staffers/councillors) for a publicity stunt. He suspended the whip from Stonewall founder Michael Cashman for criticising ‘gender-critical’ MP Rosie Duffield, while gay MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle was suspended on bogus charges shortly before the general election meaning he could not stand again. Going beyond showing contempt and into causing direct harm, there are already reports that the Online Safety Act is blocking access to LGBT+ educational resources. Small LGBT+ organisations will not have the resources to implement age verification requirements.
What I would ask Satvir, Darren and indeed other Labour members who consider themselves LGBT+ allies: can you really look at the behaviour of your party leadership, both in government and in opposition before that, and conclude that they are pro-LGBT+ but are just getting the messaging wrong, or that they have good intentions but are reluctant to push for further progress? The reality is that at the top of the party, deliberate decisions have been taken time and again which side with bigots against the queer community and to adopt transphobic language and anti-LGBT+ policy stances – all while they have the nerve to claim that they are treating the people whose lives they are trampling over with ‘dignity and respect’.
Satvir and Darren: you need to pick a side. Will you follow your principles and stand with the LGBT+ community? Or are you going to choose party loyalty over what you know is right?
(Oh and, by the way, as a brief postscript to anticipate a possible response: not a single LGBT+ person remotely cares about anti-LGBT+ hate crimes being made aggravated offences – though it seems your ministers don’t take calls for violence against our community that seriously anyway. And you can’t take credit for a trans-inclusive conversion therapy ban until you actually deliver it. I for one am not holding my breath.)
Andrew is a Southampton-based campaigner for LGBT+ rights and climate action. In his professional life, he works as a translator, editor and language consultant. Pronouns: he/him.
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