JK Rowling has accused Sir Keir Starmer of “abandoning women” who are concerned about transgender rights (BBC, Spectator, Sky).
In an article for the Times, the Harry Potter author criticises the Labour leader for a “dismissive and often offensive” approach to feminist concerns.
She also says she would struggle to vote for a party of which she was once a member because she does not trust Starmer’s judgment and has a “poor opinion” of his character.
“As long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women fighting to retain the rights their foremothers thought were won for all time, I’ll struggle to support them,” she says. “The women who wouldn’t wheesht [be quiet] didn’t leave Labour. Labour abandoned them.”
Rowling’s intervention comes after Starmer used a televised interview to signal a shift in his position on transgender rights, an issue that has split Labour and caused him significant political discomfort. He had previously criticised Rosie Duffield, a Labour MP who campaigns on women rights, for saying that only women have a cervix. In 2021 he said her comments were “something that shouldn’t be said and were not right”.
Last week, however, Starmer said he now agreed with his fellow male, Sir Tony Blair, the former Labour leader, that “biologically, a woman is with a vagina and a man is with a penis”. Asked about his previous comments on Duffield, he said that the debate at the time had become “very toxic, very divided, very hard line”.
Rowling says that Starmer has done nothing to allay her concerns about his position, attacking him in particular for failing to defend Duffield, who has suffered death threats.
“Rosie has received literally no support from Starmer over the threats and abuse, some of which has originated from within the Labour Party itself, and has had a severe, measurable impact on her life,” she writes, adding: “The impression given by Starmer at Thursday’s debate was that there had been something unkind, something toxic, something hard line, in Rosie’s words, even though almost identical words had sounded perfectly reasonable when spoken by Tony Blair.”
Rowling’s intervention comes after Duffield announced she had withdrawn from hustings events because constant abuse and harassment from trolls and “fixated individuals” have made her fear for her safety.
In a statement posted on X, Duffield, who is running again to be MP for Canterbury, said her attendance at the events was “impossible” because of the actions of a “few fixated individuals”, who had pursued their “spite and misrepresentation” with “a new vigour” during the election campaign.
She added: “Since the start of this campaign, myself and many other candidates have had to be mindful of our own safety and the safety of our campaign teams. I’ve had to spend time and money on personal security. This has a very real effect on democracy and MPs should be able to meet with and talk to all of their constituents, particularly during an election period.”
As Rowling’s article suggests, Duffield is no stranger to the worst excesses of the trans rights movement, which regards any attempt to argue that trans rights should not automatically take precedence over women’s sex-based rights in every social setting as ‘transphobic’.
Since becoming Canterbury’s first Labour MP for 99 years in 2017, LGBT Labour have constantly complained about her ‘transphobia’. In 2022, she considered leaving the party after “obsessive harassment” from current and former party members. Last month, an internet troll was given an eight-week suspended sentence for sending chilling messages threatening to shoot Duffield, and for sending JK Rowling an audio message in which he said he was going to kill her with a hammer.
Duffield also recently revealed that Sir Keir Starmer offered “no apology” when the two finally spoke after she told a party whip she had not been talked to by her leader in two-and-a-half years. “Natalie Elphicke [the former Conservative MP who recently defected to Labour] was welcomed with open arms,” she said. “I got 17 minutes and still no apology for being briefed against by head of comms.”
The reference to briefings against her relates to the fallout from a Commons debate on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill in 2023, when Duffield was heckled by her party’s own male backbenchers.
Having welcomed the Government’s move to make an order under section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 preventing the Bill – which would cut the time it takes to legally change your gender, lower the age at which you can do it to 16 and eliminate the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria – from proceeding to Royal Assent, she went on to ask the then Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack, whether he “recognised the strength of feeling among women and women’s rights groups and activists in Scotland that this Bill seeks to allow anyone at all to legally self-identify as either sex and, therefore, enter all spaces, including those necessarily segregated by sex, such as domestic violence settings, changing rooms and prisons?”
Writing in the Times, Jawad Iqbal described what Ms Duffield had to endure while asking this question as “appalling bullying” – and Parliament TV’s clip of her speech makes for uncomfortable viewing.
As soon as Ms Duffield gets to her feet, the atmosphere turns nasty. Clearly uncomfortable, she struggles throughout to be heard over the abuse directed at her from her own benches. Just out of shot, Lloyd Russell-Moyle can be heard working himself into a spittle-flecked rage, barracking Ms Duffield throughout, while former minister Ben Bradshaw shouts “absolute rubbish” just as she’s defending the need for traumatised female victims of male-perpetrated violence to have access to spaces that are segregated by sex.
Following the debate, audio emerged of Matthew Doyle, a senior aide to Labour Party leader Sir Keir, briefing against Ms Duffield. Mr Doyle was caught on tape dismissing the MP as “irritating” and “disingenuous” and suggesting it might be helpful if she “spen[t] a bit more time in Canterbury [i.e., her constituency]” rather than “hanging out with JK Rowling”.
In an excoriating interview with the Express two months later, Ms Duffield criticised the party for its “absolute lack of support”, claimed it had been “captured” by powerful campaign groups like LGBT Labour, but insisted she wouldn’t let “a handful of people in a very small clique… hound me out”.
