J K Rowling is right: Labour must apologise for its snivelling trans cowardice

Now that the tide finally seems to be turning in the gender wars, it feels like a good moment to ask the following question. Who deserves the most contempt? Is it the “trans rights” bullies who tried to get women sacked from their jobs, merely for having the temerity to suggest that males shouldn’t compete in women’s rugby, and that rapists shouldn’t be placed in women’s prisons? Or is it the many high-status people who privately agreed with those women – but chose not to speak up, for fear of seeming out of step with fashionable opinion?

Increasingly, I think it’s the latter. Fanaticism is bad. But cowardice is worse. And, throughout this wretched row, no one has displayed greater cowardice than the Labour Party.

Since the publication, two weeks ago, of the Cass Review into the use of puberty-blocking drugs on vulnerable children, you may have noticed that some Labour MPs are growing a tiny bit braver. On Monday night, Shabana Mahmood, the shadow justice secretary, said she agrees with JK Rowling that “biological sex is real and immutable” (ie women don’t have penises) – and added that women shouldn’t be punished for saying so.

A step forward, yes. But that doesn’t mean we should let Labour off the hook. Because, as Rowling herself so rightly pointed out in response, a major apology is in order. After all, now that senior party figures like Mahmood are at last plucking up the courage to speak out in defence of women, when is Labour going to say sorry for its appalling treatment of Rosie Duffield?

Duffield is a backbench Labour MP who has always been clear that biological sex is “real and immutable”. For this sole reason, she has spent the past five years being relentlessly abused, smeared and accused of “transphobia” by Labour activists – and even some Labour MPs. Yet, in all that time, senior party figures haven’t lifted a finger to defend her. Indeed, according to Duffield, Sir Keir Starmer has never offered her a word of sympathy, either in public or in private. Like the rest of Labour’s frontbenchers, he left her to the wolves.

Why? I think the reason is obvious. Sir Keir and his team are snivelling, spineless weaklings who would rather appease the bullies than support their colleague.

Of course, some people may feel that Sir Keir was in a difficult position. After all, he’s already

Sir Keir and his team are weaklings who’d rather appease the bullies than support their colleague

kicked the anti-Semites out of his party. If he has to kick out the misogynists as well, the Labour Party will have hardly any members left.

Even so, his cowardice throughout this whole affair should worry voters – and not just feminists. After all, Sir Keir is almost certainly our next PM. And how can we expect him to stand up to Putin if he hasn’t even got the guts to confront his own activists?

To have any hope of persuading voters that he isn’t as weedy as he seems, Sir Keir must make a public apology to Ms Duffield, on behalf of the entire Labour Party. And, to prove that he means it, he must add her to his frontbench team: specifically, as shadow secretary for women.

Since 2021, the occupant of that role has been Anneliese Dodds. Sadly, though, I’m not sure she’s quite right for it.

On International Women’s Day 2022, she was repeatedly asked, on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, to define the word “woman”. And she floundered. “There are different definitions legally,” gibbered Ms Dodds, helplessly. “I think it does depend on what the context is…”

A spokeswoman for women who doesn’t know what a woman is. Just give the job to Ms Duffield, and end this farce now.