Westminster’s tortuous battle with the gender query

What’s a girl?

In recent times it’s a query that has brought on political punch-ups, get together splits and despatch field spats.

A fancy, emotionally-charged and fiercely contested argument round gender, trans rights and ladies’s sex-based rights has usually left politicians at Westminster floundering to reply a seemingly easy query.

Right now’s Supreme Courtroom ruling might, simply might, calm a political row that has produced all kinds of verbal contortions, notably from Sir Keir Starmer.

Showing on the BBC’s Query Time election debate in June final yr, the Labour chief stated he agreed with former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s remark that “biologically, a girl is with a vagina and a person is with a penis”.

However he was criticised by the Harry Potter writer and former Labour donor JK Rowling, who accused the get together beneath Sir Keir’s management of a “dismissive and infrequently offensive” strategy to girls’s considerations.

The query of self-identification for transgender folks has lengthy been thorny for the Labour Celebration.

Its 2019 manifesto dedicated Labour to introducing self-identification.

In September 2021, the then-leader of the opposition slapped down one in every of his personal MPs, Rosie Duffield, for saying that solely girls have a cervix.

Sir Keir informed the BBC’s Andrew Marr Present: “That should not be stated. It is not proper.”

Duffield has since give up the Labour Celebration and now sits as an unbiased.

Chatting with LBC in March 2022, Sir Keir was repeatedly pressed on the difficulty, saying the “overwhelming majority” of ladies “after all haven’t got a penis” – including that those that are born with a gender they do not determine with ought to be handled with respect.

With the difficulty more and more divisive in his personal get together, the Labour chief stated to the Sunday Occasions a yr later: “For 99.9% of ladies, it’s utterly organic… and, after all, they have not bought a penis.”

By the summer time of 2023, Labour’s place had shifted and the get together dominated out introducing a self-ID system to permit folks to vary their authorized intercourse with out a medical analysis.

Sir Keir informed BBC Radio 5 Reside: “Firstly, a girl is an grownup feminine, so let’s clear that one up.”

Typically sounding utterly exasperated by the query, the Labour chief stated in a single interview that “virtually no person is speaking about trans points”, querying why it had turn into a spotlight of fierce debate.

However it had, whether or not he preferred it or not.

The Conservative Celebration repeatedly tried to ridicule Sir Keir’s place and carve out a transparent political dividing line.

On the Tory convention in 2023, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, stated: “A person is a person, a girl is a girl, that is simply widespread sense.”

However his jibes in opposition to the Labour chief weren’t with out controversy.

Throughout Prime Minister’s Questions in February 2024, Sunak jokingly ridiculed Sir Keir for U-turning on how he outlined a girl.

However the mom of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey – who was transgender – was in Parliament that day and Sunak confronted calls to apologise.

By the point of final yr’s basic election, Sunak stated voters confronted a “crystal-clear alternative” concerning the safety of single-sex areas, promising to rewrite the Equality Act to clarify that intercourse as a protected attribute means organic intercourse.

Right now’s Supreme Courtroom ruling has been welcomed by the Conservatives, with chief Kemi Badenoch calling it a “victory for all the girls who confronted private abuse or misplaced their jobs for stating the plain”.

As Sunak’s girls and equalities minister, Badenoch led the UK authorities’s efforts to dam Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Invoice.

She has beforehand criticised what she referred to as “excessive gender ideology” and “trans ideology” and opposed gender-neutral bathrooms.

And in an indication that the Tories may lastly be prepared to surrender one in every of their most cherished assault traces, Badenoch declared on social media: “The period of Keir Starmer telling us that some girls have penises has come to an finish. Hallelujah!”

A Labour supply stated Sir Keir had introduced the get together to a “widespread sense place” on the topic from an “activist” stance, and it was “one of many causes” the voters felt that they might again the get together after the “catastrophe of 2019”.

Labour usually are not the one get together to have tied themselves in knots on this difficulty.

It was notably thorny for the SNP, whose former chief Nicola Sturgeon championed the growth of trans rights, cheered on by some in her get together and opposed loudly by others.

Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney, who has been eager to keep away from the difficulty, will now face the problem of guaranteeing his authorities adheres to the legislation as interpreted by the Supreme Courtroom.

The Liberal Democrats have had their issues too.

Formally, the get together is pro-trans rights. It has a strong and influential LGBTQ+ part and campaigned on the final basic election for authorized recognition of non-binary identities.

In Could 2023, chief Sir Ed Davey informed LBC: “The overwhelming majority of individuals could have the identical gender as their organic intercourse, however a small quantity will not.”

When requested by presenter Nick Ferrari “so, a girl can have a penis?”, he replied: “Properly, fairly clearly.”

He went on to counsel that trans folks’s rights have been adequately protected by the Equality Act, which “enable there to be single intercourse areas”.

His feedback have been ridiculed by then Tory chief Sunak – and didn’t go down effectively with gender important campaigners in his personal get together.

Liberal Voice for Ladies (LVW), which has fought an extended marketing campaign in opposition to a ban on having a stall on the annual Lib Dem convention, stated their chief had made the get together “look dishonest, unreliable and indifferent from actuality”.

Earlier this yr, get together chiefs backed down and allowed LVW to carry occasions and have exhibition stands after the group threatened to sue for discrimination.

Reform UK is evident in its opposition to what it calls “transgender indoctrination” and is dedicated to scrapping the Equality Act.

Its 2024 basic election “contract” states: “There are two sexes and two genders.”

The get together provides: “It’s a harmful safeguarding difficulty to confuse youngsters by suggesting in any other case… no gender questioning, social transitioning or pronoun swapping, inform dad and mom of under-16s about their youngsters’s life choices. Colleges should have single-sex services.”

On paper, the Inexperienced Celebration of England and Wales is equally clear, on the reverse finish of the spectrum.

The get together’s constitution of Rights and Obligations states “trans males are males, trans girls are girls, and that non-binary identities exist and are legitimate”, and it campaigns to make it simpler for trans folks to vary their authorized standing.

However throughout the get together there are main splits over the difficulty.

Final yr, the Greens have been ordered by a court docket to pay practically £100,000 to their former deputy chief Shahrar Ali after it discovered the get together had discriminated in opposition to him once they fired him as a spokesman throughout a row over his gender important beliefs.

Right now’s court docket ruling takes the speedy stress off the Labour authorities and different politicians who’ve struggled to reply the query “what’s a girl?”

However with passions operating excessive on either side of the talk, it’s unlikely to go away.

Further reporting by Sam Francis and James Cook dinner