At Tuesday evening’s back-slapping dinner for Conservative MPs, Boris Johnson greeted his colleagues with a typical joke, aimed at exploiting Labour’s discomfort over the sensitive issue of gender: “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Or, as Keir Starmer would put it, people who are assigned female or male at birth,” he quipped.
Just hours later, one of those MPs in attendance, Jamie Wallis, issued a heartfelt statement, admitting they were struggling with gender dysphoria.
As if trying to atone for his gag, Johnson kicked off prime minister’s questions the following day by hailing Wallis’s bravery.
Some Tory strategists had hoped to sit back and watch Labour squirm over “culture war” issues – in particular trans rights.
“We don’t really need to do anything,” one senior party figure said gleefully, citing recent interviews in which Starmer appeared to struggle to answer questions about what defines a woman, which they jokingly referred to as “Penisgate”.
On Wednesday last week, when the prime minister said in the House of Commons that the “basic facts of biology” are “overwhelmingly important” in defining gender identity, some relieved feminists took to Mumsnet message boards to hail his approach, a fact that did not go unnoticed at CCHQ.
Yet Johnson’s U-turn on a U-turn in the space of a few hours on Thursday night over conversion practices underlined the fact that while some in Downing Street may want to fight a “war on woke”, it is not just Labour that is struggling to navigate such sensitive questions.
Vocal Tory backbenchers including Dehenna Davison and Alicia Kearns – both from Johnson’s 2019 intake – were quick to make their dismay public, when ITV News were leaked a “handling” document, setting out how the conversion practices ban could be quietly dropped. Davison called it “a matter of basic decency”.
The very public row buoyed Labour strategists, who insist the Conservatives are just as divided as Starmer’s party – and put Labour’s recent travails down to a failure to communicate its position properly, rather than an ideological split.
Yet the Guardian understands that voters in recent focus groups carried out by Labour have been horrified by the party’s struggle to answer questions such as whether a woman can have a penis.
Asked that question in a recent LBC phone-in, Starmer stuttered and stalled. “I’m not … I don’t think we can conduct this debate with … I don’t think that discussing this issue in this way helps anyone in the long run.”
Some shadow cabinet members have been privately frustrated at Labour’s caution on such issues. “At the next general election, they will be playing those clips over and over again and we’ll be asked it in every interview,” said one.
Particularly among younger shadow cabinet members, there is a feeling that Labour should speak proudly about its progressive values – antiracism, anti-misogyny, pro-trans rights. They argue that by speaking confidently about values, Labour can avoid looking inert and awkward and being led into culture war traps that the Tories will try to set for it.
Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling up secretary, has previously said the US president Joe Biden’s campaign was a model in that regard, pointing out that “he mentioned the trans community in his victory speech, he stood up for the Black Lives Matter protesters, he spoke out about the policing of that movement, and he’s never shied away from standing up for his values”.
However, one backbencher suggested there is also a considerable group of “gender critical” Labour MPs – perhaps up to 40 – who are nervous about the potential erosion of sex-based rights.
Labour chair Anneliese Dodds dismayed some colleagues when she took a notably cautious approach, when asked by Emma Barnett to define “woman”, in a recent interview with Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
“I think it does depend what the context is, surely,” she said. “I mean, surely that is important here. You know, there are people who have decided that they have to make that transition. I’ve spoken with many of them. It’s been a very difficult process for many of those people. And understandably, because they live as a woman, you know, they want to be defined as a woman. That’s what the Gender Recognition Act … again, a Labour government brought into place.”
Privately, some older MPs believe Labour is vulnerable not just on trans rights, but on support for antiracism movements like Black Lives Matter. Fake leaflets, which had the appearance of being official Labour material, were distributed around Batley and Spen during the byelection with a picture of Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner taking the knee. The literature claimed the pair were fighting white privilege.
But the issue has also been damaging for the Conservatives, with a huge backlash against Priti Patel for her lack of support for England players taking the knee.
Stung by the criticism of a string of recent awkward Labour interviews, the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, and the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, took a noticeably punchier stance this week.
Asked about trans rights in an LBC interview, Streeting said: “Men have penises, women have vaginas, here ends my biology lesson,” before going on to say that there are also “people who transition to other genders because they experience gender dysphoria”, and that the debate should be carried out in a “respectful” way.
His remarks caused a backlash among some of the LGBT+ activists for whom Streeting had previously been seen as a champion. Political commentator Ellie Mae O’Hagan said, “If it was as simple as men have penises, women have vaginas, then trans people wouldn’t exist. Life is just a bit more complicated than that. Labour is supposed to be a party for the majority, and that means it should be able to deal with the fact that people are different and complicated and they have different paths in life.”
However, the Labour leadership believes Streeting’s is a more commonsensical position that respects vulnerable groups, while avoiding being portrayed by the Tories as out of touch with the public.
The party’s policy, which includes the protection of single sex spaces in some circumstances, has not changed – but the language has. “I think it’s fair; I think it does what it needs to do,” said a senior Labour strategist.
And the strategist added that while the Conservatives may hope to make political capital from “culture war” issues in advance of the next general election, Johnson’s party is deeply divided itself, and risks appearing out of touch with the most pressing issues in voters’ lives.
“If you’re worrying about paying your bills at the end of the month, you’re going to think, ‘Why are you talking about this?’”
