The Gender War Is Over in Britain
When Keir Starmer wanted to change the Labour Party’s stance on sex and gender, he didn’t give a set-piece speech or hold a press conference. Instead, the leader of Britain’s main opposition party stayed in the background, leaving Anneliese Dodds, a shadow minister with a low public profile, to announce the shift in a short opinion column in The Guardian. In just over 800 words, she made three big declarations. One was that “sex and gender are different.” Another was that, although Labour continues to believe in the right to change one’s legal gender, safeguards are needed to “protect women and girls from predators who might abuse the system.” Finally, Labour was therefore dropping its commitment to self-ID—the idea that a simple online declaration is enough to change someone’s legal gender for all purposes—and would retain the current requirement of a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
Dodds supplemented her article with a few explanatory tweets, but didn’t go on television to reiterate the message. The next day, Labour declined to provide a spokesperson for on the BBC’s flagship radio news show. Although Starmer did eventually answer questions on the subject, as part of a two days later, the overall effect was that of a man who had chucked a hand grenade over his shoulder and walked away, whistling.
