uality Act is the same politician who originally piloted that law through parliament. In a 2022 interview, Harriet Harman pledged her allegiance to the belief that trans women are women, and went on to say: “We also need to recognise that in some respects there need to be same-sex services, which can be delivered and you can’t have a blanket exclusion of trans women, but in certain circumstances, in narrow circumstances, you can restrict those services.”
This is, generously, entirely incoherent. Harman seems not to understand that same-sex services are only possible through the “blanket exclusion” of trans women; nor is there any suggestion of how the “certain circumstances” would be determined. Speaking to Woman’s Hour this week, she continued to maintain in the face of all evidence that the Equality Act simply needs “guidance”, even though the legal meaning of sex is contested. Ideally, an inability to understand legislation you helped to draft would be considered disqualifying for high office; instead, in another sign that Labour does not take women’s rights altogether seriously, Harman has been tipped as the next head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Labour’s ongoing discomfort with the woman issue is manifest in the fact that it took three days after the election to appoint a minister for women and equalities. The trans issue has made this a poisoned brief. Whoever was appointed, it was guaranteed to outrage either LGBT Labour or the party’s gender-critical faction. Once again, Starmer appears to have found a third way. It was eventually announced on X that the job had gone to Anneliese Dodds, who shadowed it in unimpressive style, dismissing criticisms of GRA reform as “culture wars”.
Less fanfared is the fact that Dodds will be junior to Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities, and someone who has shown a more robust grasp of the issues. This looks like a way to give transactivists a visible win, while holding the actual political power closer to the ideological centre. That’s positive, but Labour needs more than savvy optics here: the implications of gender identity run too deep to be ignored.
The infected blood and post office scandals should be a warning that ethical derelictions by the state only become more grievous with time. The harms done to children who received unevidenced medical care under the guise of treating gender dysphoria, or to female prisoners forced to share accommodation with men for the sake of “inclusion”, will not disappear because the Government prefers not to see them. And, bluntly, many of the groups most afflicted by bad gender policy are relatively young and physically fit. Unlike haemophilia sufferers or retired postmasters, the Government will not be able to evade any eventual financial liability by simply waiting for them to die.
It's an issue that simply isn't going to go away, much as Labour would like it to. This, after all, is TERF island, and JK Rowling and the many disaffected women like her won't be silenced any time soon.
Labour should not have to learn the same lessons over and over again. Women’s rights and interests are not a mere add-on. They are fundamental to a functioning society, and when women are disregarded, deeper problems follow. Starmer may be congratulating himself for now on having equally displeased both sides of the argument about gender. Instead, he should be asking himself how to make law and policy that is actually fit for purpose — for women, and for all. Trans issues did not decide this election. But a failure to reckon with them seriously will be an indictment of Labour’s future fitness to govern.
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