The Labour Party doesn’t know whether it is coming or going on transgender issues. Ten days ago the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights produced a card of twelve pledges for candidates to sign. The pledges include support for trans-self-identification, the expulsion of transphobic members, and describes Woman’s Place UK and LGB Alliance as ‘trans-exclusionist hate groups’. Guido has compiled the confusing responses of all the candidates…

Lisa Nandy

• The most unapologetically pro-trans rights, signed up to the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights pledges in full.
• Supports self-identification, allowing trans women in women-only spaces like prisons and changing rooms, and expelling transphobic members. Sparking the #ExpelMe hashtag on Twitter
• She too has now  “clarified” her position, saying she would allow a trans-women child rapist in a women’s prison, just not with other women. Implying they would be put in solitary confinement. Long term solitary confinement has been ruled to be a breach of human rights.

Rebecca Long-Bailey

• Signed up to the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights pledges, then on the Marr Show she appeared to contradict the pledges she signed up to, rowing back on describing Women’s Place UK as a ‘hate group‘.
• Then ‘clarified‘ her position, saying single-sex spaces should be allowed to exclude transgender people, as set out in the current Equality Act. Which contradicts the ‘trans women are women’ pledges in the first place…

Keir Starmer

• Refuses to sign the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights pledges.
• Instead signed up to the LGBT+ Labour pledges instead:
  • Supporting the introduction of self-identification
  • Declaring that “trans women are women, that trans men are men, and that non-binary gender identities are valid and should be respected.”
  • Calling on the Jo Cox Women in Leadership Programme to increase LGBT representation.
• The difference in each pledge list seems to mainly be over the expulsion of Labour Party members who express supposedly “transphobic views”. In reality this is about protecting women-only spaces.
  

Meanwhile, in the deputy leadership race; Angela Rayner, Dawn Butler, and Rosena Allin-Khan have signed up to the Trans Campaign pledges, while Richard Burgon and Ian Murray have not. This means all the women in both races have signed up to the Trans pledges, while the three men have chosen to avoid them…

Butler sparked more confusion earlier this week by claiming firstly that babies are born without sex (something not even Labour’s Trans Campaign claims), before performing a spectacular reverse ferret saying trans women should not serve time in female prisons. It seems to Guido that Butler and Long-Bailey are trying to have their trans cake and eat it too…

Yesterday Tony Blair waded in uninvited, warning:

“You have got to distinguish between the advocacy of things that are right — gay rights, transgender rights, whatever it is — and launching yourself politically into a culture war with the right. If you go, ‘Transgender rights is our big thing,’ and the right goes, ‘Immigration controls is our big thing,’ you’re going to lose that. You’re not going to be advancing any of the things you want to do… If you’re going out there and trying to advocate things in a finger-jabbing, sectarian way — ‘If you don’t sign up to what I’m saying, I’m going to come and disrupt your meetings and shout at you’ — you’re not going to win that battle. You’re just going to put a whole load of people off.”

Tony is of course right. Labour isn’t going to win many votes insisting on prioritising accusing mothers worried about protecting their daughters of being haters…