Labour’s women problem

J K Rowling donated £1 million to the Labour Party when Gordon Brown was leader and then a further million to the Labour-led Better Together campaign in the Scottish independence referendum. The novelist now writes that she will “struggle to support them” so long as “Labour remains dismissive and even offensive towards women fighting to retain [their] rights”.

Keir Starmer has got himself into a terrible mess trying to answer the simplest of questions, namely what a man and a woman is. The Labour leader proudly boasts about how he has changed his party and stood up against anti-Semitism. But he has been remarkably muted in his response to the constant harassment received by one of his own MPs, Rosie Duffield, at the hands of trans militants.

The Canterbury MP, the first Labour candidate ever to win that previously safe Conservative constituency, has had to hire security for protection at her own expense when canvassing. This is how toxic the politics of sex has become.

Ms Duffield has simply stated biological facts that would have been completely uncontentious in any other time. Women-only spaces remain necessary for women’s safety, she contends. Again, this is hardly some reactionary position. Yet some of her parliamentary colleagues seem to regard her as a pariah for proclaiming such self-evident truths.

Rowling has not abandoned her previous centre-Left commitments. If she feels unable to support Labour because it won’t stand up for her sex’s rights, it shows why the party can still not be trusted to defend women.

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