Labour’s identity crisis
The Labour leadership contest has descended into a “farcical civil war” over the rights of transgender people, said Celia Walden in The Daily Telegraph. Last week, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy – the two women still in the running against Keir Starmer to replace Jeremy Corbyn – signed a controversial 12-point pledge card designed to defend trans rights, calling on the party to expel members who express “transphobic” views. Drawn up in support of the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights, the pledges call on signatories to “organise and fight against... transphobic hate groups”. Among the organisations singled out for criticism is Woman’s Place UK (WPUK), a group of feminists and trade unionists who have concerns about trans women accessing women-only spaces, such as changing rooms, toilets, domestic violence refuges and prisons. In response, supporters of WPUK adopted the hashtag #ExpelMe – daring Labour either to defend them or kick them out.
The pledges have proved “hugely popular”, said Vic Parsons in The Independent. Thousands of Labour members are standing up for trans people like me. As well as recognising that we are disproportionately likely to be homeless, unemployed and victims of hate crime, the pledges include a commitment to “listen to trans people about transphobia”. And people really should listen to us. We regard the likes of WPUK as transphobic “for good reason”. The group’s belief that trans women will prey on others in women-only spaces “derives from a fundamental fear of trans people”. On the contrary, we need to take a stand against this pledge card, which is an “astonishingly authoritarian document”, said Janice Turner in The Times. It not only demands that signatories “accept there is no material conflict between trans rights and women’s rights”, which is clearly debatable; it also says anyone who disagrees is a bigot, and must be expelled. It means a “witch hunt” against thousands of mainly female party members – or anyone who supports WPUK.
At first glance, it may seem “mind-boggling” that a question of gender identity “concerning around 1% of the UK population” has proven so incendiary, said Zoe Strimpel in The Sunday Telegraph – “but take another look and it’s not surprising at all”. In 2020, issues of sex and gender cut to the “psycho-sexual bone”. When it comes to transgender politics, the stakes “really are existential”: are you what you say you are? The answers have “profound implications for how society is ordered” in future. For now, however, the issue of “identity politics” is “uniquely challenging for the Left”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. The Conservatives are a party of individualists; Labour is a party of “collective struggle”. That solidarity is currently breaking down as women who have “waved placards all their lives” find themselves picketed at WPUK meetings by people they’d “once have marched alongside”. If the next leader’s task is bringing Labour together, “this doesn’t bode well”.