Starmer isn't listening. Is he about to throw the UK trans community under Trump's bus?

Back at the beginning of February this year I wrote on this blog that I could foresee Keir Starmer throwing the British trans community under the the oncoming bus that was Donald Trump and his deranged transphobic obsessions. I speculated that in the coming months, Trump would prove incredibly difficult to deal with and that Starmer - understanding just how appallingly weak the United Kingdom is now (entirely reliant on the US for its nuclear deterrent, with an armed forces that have dwindled to shockingly small proportions and now cut off from the trading power of the EU that might have some sway with the authoritarian American President) would be forced into a dual strategy of supplication, flattery and concession to keep him onside. I predicted a scenario of Trump being invited for a State visit to the UK, with Starmer keen to offer something to keep the President sweet and to demonstrate his commitment to some of the ghastly culture war punishments that Trump enjoys inflicting on his victims. 

At that point (months before the horrific UK Supreme Court ruling had - out of legal nowhere - ended 50 years of public policy and 20 years of black letter war that had allowed trans people to exist with meaningful recognition and dignity in this country), I wondered if the move Starmer was going to make was around passports. Trump has stripped trans people of the right to get or renew a passport in their acquired, legal sex, trapping many in the United States. It's the work of one afternoon and a Home Office statement by the now fashionably hardline Yvette Cooper to introduce the same humiliation into the UK, and back in February, I was urging anyone who needs to renew their UK passport to do so immediately. 

That warning still stands. I still think Starmer could easily decide to do something similar, though whether he feels able to go quite that far yet is unclear. 

However, in other ways the planets are aligning as predicted, and I also look back to this post to see so much of it coming true. The prognosis remains bleak for the UK trans community, though the details of our our intended destruction have changed somewhat. 

No-one could have predicted the astonishing, incoherent Supreme Court ruling. It took everyone - legal profession, government, trans-hostile Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), media and even the TERFs who won, by surprise. The trans community - well used to being despised and treated with contempt in the British media and political discourse - has seen quite a few setbacks in the last few years, but nothing prepared us for this. The absolutely undisguised bigotry of the process (the Supreme Court heard from five anti-trans groups when the case was heard and zero trans people, or trans-led groups) had raised a lot of foreboding, but - worst case scenario - we anticipated a transphobic ruling parroting the hate speech of groups like Sex Matters but reluctantly denying the For Women Scotland appeal against the Scottish government because the law was clear. Trans people with Gender Recognition Certificates were, in law, (the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA) says this) their acquired sex "for all purposes", after all.  Insanely, the Court's decision to disapply this to the Equality Act 2010 (EA) means that I am legally now - under the EA - a man, yet under every other British law, a woman. The Court's ruling, written with a type of toxic disingenuousness that comes either from the ideologically bigoted or the disinterested Establishment supremacist, full of slurs and bitterly hurtful language, was said by some to "clarify" the EA; offering a judgment about what it had meant all along in the 14 years since it passed.  This is demonstrable nonsense on many levels - there is paperwork, even Hansard material to demonstrate the opposite. Even one of the co-authors of the draft Equality Act spoke out in the days after to say that the Court's interpretation was not what was intended. In fact, the ruling went even further, rewriting the meaning of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 too - in effect wrecking 50 years of settled, uncontroversial legal understanding out of nowhere, and for no reason.

We're deep into Orwell territory now. In 1984. Winston Smith feels puzzled when he learns that "we are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia". He momentarily can't reconcile this with what he thought he knew - that the country was at war with Eastasia. "He who controls the past controls the present, and he who controls the present controls the future" says the Party of course. The Supreme Court rewrote the past and the champagne flowed outside the building. The astonished victors just got a glimpse of what future they could now create. One without us in it at all. And they have set out with gusto on making that happen - as this piece unpacks (note the focus Sex Matters, a group that essentially runs the policy making process at the EHRC, places on eliminating trans people from society completely).

With blood in the water, the ruling was soon being energetically weaponised to create a meaning that the Court, no matter how ludicrous its logic, clearly did not intend - and in fact had said that they did not intend in the limp rubric to their judgment. Within ten minutes, British newspapers were screaming inaccurate and brutal headlines. TERFS, including those in senior roles at the EHRC (this includes its Chair) were within 24 hours briefing the media that trans women must immediately be banned en masse from toilets, changing rooms, and other women's spaces that in many cases they had been using for years, even decades. Media hysteria took hold whilst I and many, many within in our community felt physically sick with shock. TV and radio studios soon filled with know-nothing commentators, almost all of them invited to say trans-hostile things in keeping with the UK media's almost universal editorial stance. Anti trans voices were wild with joy. Despite the Supreme Court explicitly (though disingenuously) saying that it did not wish its ruling to be exploited to demean and claim victory over trans people, one lawyer rapidly turned up on a university legal panel surrounded by other TERFs wearing a t-shirt saying Victory. And victory they certainly saw it as - one has a book coming out next month which tells the story of the final crushing on 'trans ideology' in the UK by these 'new suffragettes', marking the point that the battle has finally been 'won'*.

Inside 2 weeks, the EHRC rushed out an 'interim update', late on a Friday night - framing the ruling in the most punitive of ways (trans people were to be blanket banned from not just single-sex spaces they had been using in keeping with their lived sex, but in many cases the ones - not that we would use them - that matched even our sex assigned at birth. Everywhere, in other words - with perhaps some grudging possibility that we might be able to use gender neutral toilets if they existed or push disabled people out of the way to use their limited facilities). When the effective elimination of trans people from society that this would bring about was put to the Chair of the EHRC on the radio, the head of Britain's equalities law statutory body suggested that maybe trans activists could lobby for new spaces just for them, displaying a Pontius Pilate-level note of disdain. Elsewhere, one of the most ferociously transphobic EHRC Commissioners remarked that trans people had brought all this on themselves and that we were simply going to have to "get used to" having fewer rights. Media hysteria - never far away away from the "debate" about people like me - exploded afresh like a bin fire sprayed with a fire hose of petrol. Soon businesses and politicians were lining up to support it all.

Including Starmer. 

Starmer is a transphobe, surrounded by transphobes. There is no evidence that he has any concept of the experience of a trans person or any time for the disruption to the ordered, highly controlled Starmerite project that we might cause. Above all a technocrat, but with a simplistic ruthlessness born out of ambition, Starmer has no political instincts at all. Indeed, in the book Get In which charts his brutal elimination of Corbyn, aides and colleagues reflect that Starmer doesn't even like politics and doesn't see why he has to deal with it at all (a claim that makes deep sense in the light of his recent complete failure to detect opposition to cuts of winter fuel payment and disability benefits). 

Personality-free yet impatient, his views, it seems, are simple and your job - as a Minister, aide, or civil servant - is to do what you are told. To stop arguing and just get on with it. As for trans people, after an uncomfortable flirtation with a trans-supportive party policy during the Corbyn era, as soon as he started to emerge as a serious candidate of the right so vanished that lukewarm support. His journey to that position is discussed in my post of July 9th, 2024 and I won't rehash it here. Suffice to say that since I wrote that, his position has hardened. 

Despite being left for dead as the TERFs hung out the bunting, the UK trans community and its small group of supporters have finally found their voice. Campaigns have started, MPs have been flooded with messages, court cases against the toxic EHRC 'update' launched. 900 people went to Parliament last week - trans people, their friends and allies - in the largest lobbying action of this sort by the LGBTQ+ community ever, and one of the largest by any group. The focus of this has been what came next, once the TERF celebrations had died down a little and their pet organisation went to work to solidify the moment - the EHRC's subsequent launching of its 'draft guidance' for the relevant parts of the Equality Act. This was its 'official' attempt to interpret the legal mess left by the Supreme Court. Unsurprising, this guidance was shot through with confusion, prejudice and hostility and - again - included a call for blanket bans of trans people to be introduced. The EHRC then put this out for 'consultation' - initially trying to railroad the whole thing through in two weeks, but then being told to extend it to six - a period in which it invited stakeholders (businesses, services, and others affected) to submit their responses. As I write that consultation closes in around 3 hours. 

Cynically, the EHRC has said it's not interested in hearing that it has misinterpreted the law - even the new law. It only wishes for feedback on how clear it has made its guidance. The guidance does completely misunderstand the law, as many have said - deliberately or through stupidity, or both (here's how) - and it remains to be seen whether the EHRC is remotely interested in changing its position. 

By 11.59pm this evening when the consultation closes, the EHRC will have had thousands of submissions from trans people explaining how its stance is going to ruin their lives, but none of us are expecting the EHRC to do a damn thing about it. Alongside the endless problems with this disastrous ambush on us, some will have mentioned in their submission how the 'blanket ban' stance has been flatly contradicted by two ex-Supreme Court judges who have said that the Court ruling did not authorise this. Supreme Court judges can't do interviews after they hand a judgment down, but their friends and colleagues, now retired, certainly can and it was uniquely significant that this happened. 

We must however expect the EHRC to ignore all this. Completely in the grip of Sex Matters, any final changes it makes to its final version to be submitted to the Minister for Women and Equalities are expected be no more than window dressing. Once the Minister, Bridget Phillipson has it, and once it is agreed by the government, the guidance then goes before Parliament. This is essentially a process in which Parliament is given just 40 days to actively object to it; if they don't it then becomes official Statutory Guidance to the Equality Act. That gives it the status of not law itself. But it does have legal teeth. If a service provider does not follow the Statutory Guidance then they'd better have a pretty legally bullet-proof reason for doing so, as it increases their legal jeopardy. Most will just toe the line blindly, whatever the price we pay.

All this brings us back to Starmer. The process of destroying trans people's basic rights in the UK, with the result that we will be pushed out of society, is now running on rails. To expand the metaphor, the locomotive of hate now has four sets of 'points' it must cross if it is to get to where the haters of TERF Island, and the British press, need it to be - a final destination for which they have been working for years. And haters of trans people are working hard now to ensure that the locomotive has both enough impetus make it and that those important 'points' where the whole thing could be sidetracked are guarded and locked into place. 

The first of these figurative 'points' - and a possible derailment - could come were the EHRC to actually listen to the trans community. I have given up all hope of this. There are senior people at this (UN criticised) equalities quango who have made it their career to ruin trans' peoples lives. They are about to receive a new government-appointed Chair, and the news is that she will be even more hostile to trans people. 

This brings us to the second moment of truth. The presentation of the toxic new proposals to the government. This set of 'points' could see Phillipson send the EHRC's work back to them, telling them to do again. There's absolutely no indication that she'll do this. She's the one behind the new EHRC candidate for Chair, and since the Supreme Court disaster in April, she's added her voice to the witch-hunt of trans people, and trans women in particular. 

But let's imagine at she did raise concerns. Then she runs into Starmer. The next set of 'points'.

This is where we need to be really clear on what is likely to be going on for him. 

Starmer does not seem to have been briefed on all this. That much seems clear, by the occasional, ham-fisted statements that he has been making - all anti-trans, all in favour of the implementation of the Supreme Court judgment as soon as possible. He made his most recent remarks this weekend. As usual, light on nuance and understanding but seemingly big on wanting all this to go away so that he can get on with stiff that matters.

What if Phillipson even wanted to go into bat with her boss to suggest that the EHRC is wrong or that the government needs to legislate to protect trans people consistently and actually make sense of the law post the Supreme Court's wrecking of it? To do this, she's got to get to Starmer. She's got to get his attention and his time. And to do this, she's got to get through the Svengali of Downing Street, the man who almost single-handedly got Starmer his job, Morgan McSweeney. 

McSweeney seems to be no fan of trans people. Get In mentions trans rights only once, when it talks about how McSweeney early on distanced himself from Labour party support for trans people - regarding it as a classic example of 'woke', vote-losing left wing lunacy of the kind that would hurt Labour amongst voters who were hurtling towards the right and populism. It remains unknown how deep McSweeney's views go, but as a social conservative who was, it's understood, at the heart of Starmer's recent, appalling attempts to destroy disability benefits for hundreds of thousands, and may have had his fingerprints on Starmer's recent reheating of Enoch Powell in a speech, my expectations cluster around the zero mark. 

Is McSweeney, who controls the Prime Minister's time, going to give Phillipson access to Starmer on this issue? Starmer of course has plenty in his inbox, without having to worry about less than 1% of the population who many people think are sick or weird and whose electoral clout is non existent. Phillipson isn't a junior minister - she's also Education Secretary - but she's not got the clout of the great offices of State, and getting through McSweeney to get Starmer to give all this any real attention seems unlikely. The more so because this issue is complicated. A ten minute briefing (as Starmer or McSweeney might feel is the maximum it might warrant, because, you know, this all isn't really very important why don't we just ban them?) won't cut it. And without Starmer's engagement in the topic, it's unlikely to get much time in Cabinet. There is some indication that the Cabinet Secretary, who advises on what gets onto the Cabinet's agenda is not a raving hater, but its Starmer who decides. 

And there's another factor. For Starmer, a man who has been saying 'trans women are men' for over two years now, there's no political capital at all to be gained from supporting us and much to lose. A roll call of who hates us in British society is telling. Politically - the big enemies, Reform, put their desire to destroy "gender ideology" (a term invented by the Catholic Church in the 1980s to package its bigotry) on page one of its last election manifesto. Before hating migrants even. The Tories - it goes without saying - despise us. The EHRC is staffed with Badenoch and Truss's handpicked anti-trans appointees. The LibDems are pretty quiet and doing what the LibDems tend to do, which is nothing much. Labour itself is split, with most MPs either disinterested or terrified of getting involved such is the social media horror show and the possibility of inciting a Rowling-inspired pile on. Care for trans people and our lives focuses now on the reviled rump of left wing Labour MPs who have survived the Starmer purges (though some have been kicked out of the party for continuing to act, well, you know, just a bit not right wing?). We're grateful but it gives them as much influence in the government, as, well...me.

Outside Parliament, the British media (especially the press, and the BBC) holds us in contempt, producing thousands of lie-filled hate articles, designed to create and feed moral panic each year (yes literally thousands - the data is available). Critically, most damage has been done by the so-called broadsheet press, notably The Times (widely read in the judiciary), The Daily Telegraph (the Conservative Party house newspaper, though these days mostly lined up with Reform) and The Guardian (the Labour party's equivalent of the Telegraph). These three titles have done more to completely distort and manipulate the political discourse around trans lives, with endlessly biased and partial reporting, plus continual platforming of hostile voices whilst denying trans people space, than any other actors in society. British public opinion has been deeply influenced by this tirade over the last ten years and support for us has collapsed (not because of the actions of any trans people, but as an effect of continual smears landing in the consciousness of people who know nothing of our experience nor have ever met a trans person). 

With all this in mind, what possible value is there for Starmer to treat us with dignity, equality or respect? To uphold the rights we have - as an entire group - just had ripped away? 

As a man who proudly said outside Downing Street on the day he took office, who will govern "without doctrine" (another word for values or principles), my belief is that, politically, for Starmer there is no upside in supporting us at all. In fact there's great risk - as he makes himself vulnerable to hysterical, and very popular, culture war savagings by the Tories, Reform and their attack dog newspapers. 

Further, of course - and I return now to the start of this piece - there's considerable political capital to be gained by ruining our lives. That Starmer is a Labour politician and might not be expected to be in his job to wreck the rights of minorities now seems very 2019 - his disregard for the disabled and slashing of British aid abroad showed that.

And it could be very timely to parade his take on trans people to one other audience too. 

The President of the United States.

Trump is obsessed with humiliating trans people. Our lives he calls "the big lie". From the onslaught of Executive Orders making so called 'biological sex' the only federally recognised definition, to the expulsion of trans people from the military, to the elimination of any reference to trans lives in medical or government websites or literature, to the closing down of any groups within the federal government supporting trans people, to the attempts to eliminate any federal support for trans kids and support for the prosecution of parents of trans children on child abuse charges...the list goes on and on. The other day, the Juventus soccer team was invited to The White House (they were competing in the FIFA World Club Championship); naturally Trump took the opportunity to rant about trans girls being allowed to play in girls' teams. It all plays hugely well with his Christofascist base and he uses it relentlessly. 

Trump is also the first US President in modern history to seek obeisance and homage from his allies. As capo di tutti capi, he requires that supplicants not only offer tribute (in tariffs, or special treatment - often of him, in bribes or favours) but that they endorse his world view too. Anti trans hatred is a particularly potent aspect of this - his base not only loathes us but parts of it are up to their neck in a a religious quest to fund the elimination of us globally (along with gay people). They are doing God's work...any efforts the President can make to bully weaker allies into line is deeply appreciated by them and cements their loyalty further. 

Starmer's tribute so far has included inviting Trump for a second State visit to the United Kingdom. This is likely to happen in September. 

September.

Unless an unfortunate 'derailment' along the way, for which Bridget Phillopson may be held to account, this is around the time that the EHRC should have wrapped up all its work and the new guidance can be put to bed. How agreeable then to sit next to the President at dinner at Balmoral and mention that the UK has fallen into line with the US in its persecution of trans people? An agreeable chat about how the UK Supreme Court has out a stop to this 'gender ideology' nonsense just as the Trump-owned US equivalent and his administration are seeking to? What better way to manage the talking points, to gain credibility in Trump's eyes, to burnish Starmer's attempts to portray himself as somehow Trump's confidante and truest ally? The Secretary General of NATO can call Trump "Daddy" and fawn with bile-inducing obsequiousness, but Starmer can deliver results right now. Whilst NATO must bow and scrape in front of the Godfather, Starmer can can show Trump that he's prepared to do something that he did not need to do, simply to please him. 

He can offer all this - the end of our basic legal rights - because there's almost no political downside. It's a no brainer. Perhaps he's already even promised it to Trump? Some people are beginning to ask that question.

So where does this leave us? After the EHRC does its worst, the focus moves to Phillipson and ultimately the Prime Minister. Listening to the mood music, I cannot avoid the sense that minds have long been made up. Just as they were made up after the fatally flawed Cass Review - a pre-determined political stitch up that was as much weaponised as it was basically just wrong. Just as they were around the cruel and brutal compete ban of puberty suspending drugs for trans young people, and them alone (whilst other countries continue to judiciously allow them and 40 years of medical evidence that supports their value is ignored by the UK health establishment). Just as they have been around sport and as trans women have been banned from almost every women's sport, ignoring any nuanced scientific evidence that suggests a more individualised approach. Just as teachers have been told to stop recognising and supporting trans kids at school without any care to the cost to the lives of those children. Just as the rights to 'free speech' of 'Gender Criticals' are held legally sacrosanct, whilst the views of trans people aren't invited or even heard - in universities or newspapers. 

Is Starmer going to start listening? To us?

No I do not think so.

To Farage, and to Trump?

Guided by McSweeney, and his own impatience, I believe he already is. 

So get that passport renewed.

And then get a map out and - truly - start looking hard for someplace to escape to if you possibly can. 

I want to be wrong. Since April 16th the trans community - expected by the TERFs to roll over and die - has not done so. We've screamed and moved mountains. Of course we have, and I have done my part in that too.

But its soon going to be down to the politicians. The TERFs with their press and legal supporters will be relying on them to finish the job. That means Starmer now. I have no faith in him at all. 

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*The book is called TERF Island, in an attempt to claim back a description first coined to denote the unique level of anti-trans extremism for which the UK is globally famous. Pre-order blurb reveals an A list selection of other well-known TERF commentators lining up to heap praise upon it. The reality of 'TERF Island' is explored in depth here.

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This blog was expanded with some additional material July 1st