Labour pivots on gender self-ID
In a massive policy pivot, the Labour leadership has, in principle, agreed to change its position on gender self-ID and is recommending that it should not be possible for either sex to legally change gender without medical support.
Anneliese Dodds, Labour party chairman, today declared that “sex and gender are different” and that a medical diagnosis will be needed for transgender people to receive treatment on the NHS. Writing in The Guardian, Dodds admitted that Labour’s new position would “not please everyone.”
Until now, Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, had promised to change the law to allow trans people to self-declare their gender – following the SNP’s plans introduced by former leader Nicola Sturgeon – to allow anyone over the age of 16 to self-identify without consulting a doctor.
However, in her article Dodds accused the SNP of a “cavalier approach” towards gender self-ID, adding: “The safeguards that were proposed to protect women and girls from predators who might abuse the system were simply not up to scratch.”
“As a result, the Scottish Government is still picking up the pieces, with trans rights no further forward.”
This huge U-turn in Labour’s policy was agreed at the weekend at the party’s national policy forum. Although Labour anticipates a backlash from many of its more hard-left supporters, Starmer, Dodds and his top advisers have acknowledged that self-ID is a toxic issue on the doorstep. Indeed, Starmer’s inability to define a woman is often cited as one of the most troublesome issues which potential voters – mainly women – have found difficult to stomach.
The final document produced by delegates at the Labour forum will be presented to members at the party conference in October. It plans to “modernise, simplify and reform the gender recognition law to a new process, taking into account international evidence of what works effectively”. And, despite the current process of gender recognition being “intrusive, outdated and humiliating,” it will not support self-ID. The document said it will uphold the 2010 Equality Act, “including its provision for single-sex exemptions”.
Labour has been heavily criticised for its previous position on trans rights, and accused of failing to defend women who believe in biological sex. One example was the party’s failure to defend Labour MP Rosie Duffield in the face of the abuse and intimidation she suffered after she was deemed transphobic for her belief that biological sex was real and immutable.
Regarding the policy shift, journalist Suzanne Moore tweeted: “Self ID [is] off the table for Labour. As it should be. This was not achieved by the Labour Party I am afraid but many women outside it who would not shut up.”
This is not completely true. As well as external pressure, women inside the Labour Party such as Duffield, the Lesbian Labour group and the “7,000-strong group of women members, councillors and activists who make up Labour Women’s Declaration” have applied pressure and made a difference. They have made Starmer listen.
The Labour Party is doing all it can to prepare for power. A large part of this means being able to convincingly claim it can make the right kinds of compromises. Whether Starmer can now say what a woman is, who knows, but he knows he needs their votes – and he’s willing to change policy to win them over. As Groucho Marx once said, and as Theresa May once described Labour’s last opportunistic leader: “Those are my principles and if you don’t like them…Well, I have others.”
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