Emily Thornberry: Labour has ended up in the ‘wrong place’ on trans people
Senior Labour MP Dame Emily Thornberry says her party has “ended up in the wrong place” when it comes to transgender people.
The Islington South and Finsbury MP, who also chairs the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, said there had been “social conservatism” promoted in Labour.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Political Thinking podcast, she said new Green Party MP Hannah Spencer, who won the Gorton and Denton by-election last week, “spoke like a Labour MP”.
Of her own party, she said: “I think that we have been trying to be something that we’re not, and I don’t think that we need to do that.”
She particularly pointed to the influence of Sir Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, who quit Downing Street last month under immense pressure.
“I think that he was trying to push us into a place that didn’t come naturally to us, and therefore people didn’t follow their instincts so much,” she said.
She added: “I think some of this social conservatism that was being promoted did not come naturally to us. We are not a socially conservative party.
“I dread even saying this… but I think that we’ve ended up in the wrong place on trans, and we’ve done that by treading very self-consciously and not actually following our hearts, which is that trans people are on the margins, they are vulnerable.
“If the Labour Party doesn’t look after trans people, what are we about?
“They’re most likely to get beaten up. They’re the ones who are most likely to have prejudice against them. We should not be indulging in anything that marginalises them even more.”
Education Secretary and women’s minister Bridget Phillipson has been accused of dithering over guidance on transgender people’s use of single-sex spaces after a landmark legal judgment last year.
A code of practice, updated after April’s Supreme Court ruling that the term “woman” in equality legislation referred to biological sex, was shared with the Government at the start of September.
The proposed code of practice will be used by businesses and other organisations to inform their provision of single and separate-sex services such as toilets and changing rooms.
After that ruling, Labour banned trans women from attending the Labour Party women’s conference, in what is understood to be considered the least restrictive approach to the conference that still complies with the law.
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Absolutely. Labour wonder why there is so much anger at them, they keep messing up that which they should not.
They had a record Labour win. Within weeks that started disappearing. Now they have lost ALL of that and are after two years as excruciatingly worthless as the Conservatives after 14
They are only realising this now? This “Are we the baddies?” post. – Short answer. YES DEFINITELY. “Sir Keir, it seems our attempts to win over the British people by demonising, insulting and segregating some of the most vulnerable minorities (immigrants, trans people, the disabled) in the nation has lost us 75% of our support. Quickly! Pretend we care again so those voters come back to us!” It’s funny, a lot of performative groups that rely on public support seem to be doing that all of a sudden right now. Whether it be because of lost custom and / or… Read more »
Downvote all you want anonymous person. We LGBT+ are 8-10% of the population, the disabled and neurodivergent are around 25%. Immigrants make up 16% (and they are very welcome) which rounds up to approx 30% with their British born children.
A recent YouGov survey put something like 85% of British women aged 18-50 down as intending to vote for the trans, immigrant and disabled supportive Green party.
In Wales I daresay a similar proportion have Plaid or greens in mind
“and not actually following our hearts,” enough with the bleeding heart politics already. We need a government who has some idea how to deal with the problems caused by a failing economy, that has zero productivity and a mountain of debt that will crush us all to death if it doesn’t get paid off soon.
Well that too. But there’s no reason they can’t ALSO deal with the mental health crisis they threw at half a million hardworking law abiding tax paying marginalised trans people for no reason at all apart from courting the votes of b1gots and fascists, who hate them for completely different reasons. A supposedly first world economy and advanced nation SHOULD be able to address more than one thing at a time, and this thing they caused is very simple to fix. Return the healthcare they took from children Fix the Supreme Court’s vandalism of the Equality Act 2010 Remove the… Read more »