Trans ideology has changed Britain beyond recognition

Had you told Gordon Brown in 2010 that before the next Labour Prime Minister could assume office he would have to answer questions on the campaign trail about whether a woman can have a penis, he would have no doubt have thought you stark, staring bonkers.

And had you told him that his aspiring successor would say that only “99.9 per cent of women” haven’t got a penis, he’d no doubt have been even more surprised.

And yet, if the polls are correct, this is precisely how Sir Keir Starmer will enter Downing Street. After a series of courageous interventions from figures such as JK Rowling vaulted transgender issues to the forefront of people’s minds, all parties have had to answer repeated questions about what a woman is, whether women’s single-sex spaces should be protected, and what should be taught to children in schools. Their answers have been less than clear – and sometimes contradictory.

In the last 14 years, the Conservatives have allowed the tide of radical gender ideology to sweep over across the public sector. The introduction of mandatory Relationship and Sex Education in schools, which told schools to teach “the facts” about gender identity (what “facts”, we might ask?) proved a boon for activist charities who foisted their take on radical gender ideology upon confused well-meaning teachers. In 2022, Policy Exchange published research revealing that only 28 per cent of secondary schools would reliably inform a parent if their child was considering transitioning, and that a quarter were teaching children they could be “born in the wrong body”.

The grotesque failure to repeal the Public Sector Equality Duty – “identity politics in one clause”, to coin a phrase – has resulted in radical gender ideology embedding itself in almost every government department and public body, including in local government, healthcare, universities, museums, sport, prisons and even the military. We have become so accustomed to seeing male-born athletes winning female races, or male-born rapists in women’s prisons, that we are beginning to forget how shocking this is.

Radical gender ideology is deeply embedded, and the next Government will have a number of questions to address. Will they defend the ban on giving puberty blockers to children, currently being challenged in the courts? Will they protect single-sex intimate care in the NHS and protect women’s spaces in prisons and in refuge centres? Will they continue funding sporting bodies that allow biological males to compete in the female category? Will they endorse the two critical pieces of schools guidance currently out to consultation? These would, among other things, guarantee parents’ right to see teaching materials and ensure they are informed if their child questioned their gender, and clarify that schools should not teach the contested concept of gender identity.

Keir Starmer knows that radical gender ideology is not popular; otherwise he would not have said the things that he has. The proportion of people who agree that “a transgender person should be able to change the sex on their birth certificate” has dropped from a high of 59 per cent in 2016 to 26 per cent today. Simultaneously, 47 per cent believe “attempts to give equal opportunities to transgender people have gone too far”, compared to only 22 per cent who think they have not gone far enough. It is perhaps for this reason that he has recently clarified that he thinks “women have a vagina and men have a penis”, and moved quickly to suggest he believes that gender ideology should not be taught in schools, after his Shadow Education Secretary repeatedly refused to endorse the Government’s draft guidance.

In Government, though, actions as well as words are needed. Labour’s recent tack to the centre puts it sharply at odds with many of its activists – and no small number of the parliamentary party – for whom “trans rights” are a sacred value. Difficult choices will have to be made. How, for example, could they simultaneously “implement the expert recommendations of the Cass Review” and introduce a “full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices” – both commitments in their manifesto?

If Starmer wants to control the narrative on this agenda, one of the most important steps he could take is end the tide of activism within the public sector. Many of the more egregious policies of recent years were never commanded by ministers – but rather were introduced by stealth by public bodies, with staff networks and external training agencies advocating for the erasure of women’s rights and promoting ‘Stonewall law’ as fact. More than one Minister has found themselves in hot water as a result.

Starmer has shown himself to be ruthless at clearing out the Corbynite Left from within the Labour Party. He understands that no organisation can function well when certain factions push their own agenda and refuse to accept the authority of the leader. If he becomes Prime Minister, is he willing to be similarly ruthless in restoring impartiality to the public sector?

Iain Mansfield is director of research at Policy Exchange. Its new report, ‘Biology Matters’, can be found here.