Starmer would ‘strip away safeguards’ in pursuit of gender self-ID

The leader of the Labour Party has emphasised that he supports radical gender reforms.

Speaking at an event organised by LGBT website PinkNews, Sir Keir Starmer restated his party’s aim to “modernise the Gender Recognition Act” and “ban conversion therapy in all its forms”.

Labour has previously pledged to allow people to change legal sex by self-declaration – removing the requirements for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria and to have lived as though a member of the opposite sex for at least two years.

Safeguards removed

Writing for UnHerd, columnist Joan Smith said: “He no longer talks about self-ID because we know exactly what that means — stripping away safeguards, weak as they are, that make it harder for predatory men to claim to be women.

“Now the Labour frontbench talks about ‘modernising’ the Gender Recognition Act, which sounds like a minor technical change.”

Smith also blasted the Labour leader for threatening freedom of expression by stating his desire for “tougher hate crime laws so every LGBT+ crime is treated as an aggravated offence”.

The columnist highlighted that people already report cases of ‘misgendering’ to the police and said the comment “raises the prospect of law-abiding people facing an aggravated sentence for a social media post that uses the ‘wrong’ pronouns”.

Starmer: ‘Woman’ includes men

Earlier this year, Sir Keir came under fire for claiming that the legal definition of ‘woman’ includes men who identify as members of the opposite sex.

Speaking to The Times, he said: “A woman is a female adult, and in addition to that trans women are women, and that is not just my view – that is actually the law.”

In response, Joanna Cherry KC tweeted: “It is simply unacceptable for a senior lawyer such as @Keir_Starmer to so misstate the law on #WomensRights.”

And again on Twitter, JK Rowling said: “Now @Keir_Starmer publicly misrepresents equalities law, in yet another indication that the Labour Party can no longer be counted on to defend women’s rights.”