Labour needs to own its policy on gender - and unequivocally back trans rights

‘This can all read like a bespoke trap for former human rights lawyer Keir Starmer, forcing him to choose between what he knows is right and what will play better on Good Morning Britain.’ Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

It’s an extremely peculiar situation, if you come at it cold: neither the Labour leader, nor any of his shadow cabinet, can get through a broadcast interview without being asked who has a penis and who has a vagina. Why, at this moment of both national and international crisis, has the media decided that the most important question for a party that hasn’t been in government for 12 years, is a hypothetical one about genitals?

It’s not really about vaginas, it’s a quest for the “gotcha” moment, the inescapable trap of deliberately twisted logic which merits unpicking. The question stems from the debate around the 2018 government consultation on whether the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) should have been reformed.