hts to trampling over the rights of others. Immediately after Starmer apologised, calls went out once again to remove the party whip from Rosie Duffield, Labour MP for Canterbury who was accused of transphobia last summer when she declared that “only women have a cervix.”
Hiding under the glitter and sparkles of the LGBT+ rainbow lies a misogynistic campaign to dismantle the rights of women. It took only six minutes for Panny Antoniou (pronouns he/him) — co chair of Open Labour — to launch his salvo: “This is a good start. Now can we tackle transphobia in the party? You can start by removing the whip from Rosie Duffield”.
Grovelling apologies are not the answer. Starmer’s tweet pandered to the extremists who replied with condescension: ‘We are pleased that you have recognised and apologised for this mistake’.
If Starmer does not take on the LGBT lobby, it will end up tearing the Labour party apart. Rosie Duffield is not an outlier: the public knows the difference between men and women.
Now is the time for decisive leadership. A generation ago, Neil Kinnock had the guts to take on the Militant tendency that was eating the 1980s Labour Party from the inside. Keir Starmer would be wise to follow Kinnock’s example. The alternative, like then, is political oblivion for his party.
It's not going to happen though. This kind of issue matters to the left-liberal middle class who now dominate the Labour Party, but not all to the "red wall" that Labour are leaving behind. And for Starmer, despite his rhetoric, it's still the former who pull the strings.
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