As the fallout continues from the Supreme Court’s ruling that under equality law “woman” means a biological woman, one of the most significant developments is the apparent final conversion of the Prime Minister to the gender-critical cause.
In 2021, Sir Keir Stamer argued that it was “not right” to say that only women have a cervix. The following year, he declared flat-out that “trans women are women”. Granted he did concede in 2023 that “99.9 per cent of women… haven’t got a penis” – but only last June, when asked if he agreed with Sir Tony Blair that a woman has a vagina and a man has a penis, did he begin to publicly acknowledge what the Supreme Court has just confirmed to be reality. “Tony,” he replied, “put it very well.”
Now, after years of tying himself in knots, Sir Keir seems almost gung-ho about the whole biological-sex business. Either that, or profoundly relieved that the ruling has freed him to speak his mind without a pile-on from Labour trans activists.
On Tuesday, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman fielded a question about whether he no longer believes a trans woman is a woman. The unequivocal answer was: “Well, no – the Supreme Court judgment has made clear that, when looking at the Equality Act, a woman is a biological woman.”
Earlier that day, Sir Keir himself finally broke his silence on the verdict, welcoming it “because I think it gives real clarity. It allows those that have got to draw up guidance to be really clear about what that guidance should say.”
Which just leaves the issue of how clear that clarity will be for the people in charge of what happens next, with the Guardian suggesting that “small organisations – grassroots women’s sports teams, small business owners unsure what to do about the staff loos – will be as bewildered as their customers”, while “even large ones like the NHS face judgments of Solomon”.
Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities, has backed the rollout of unisex lavatories, saying that trans women shouldn’t use women’s toilets. Even so, “the EHRC [Equality and Human Rights Commission] will be setting out additional guidance and a statutory code of practice because we need to make sure that everyone has the ability to access services that are safe and appropriate and respect their privacy and dignity”.
The EHRC’s updated code of practice will also tell companies including pubs, restaurants, shops and public bodies how to respond. When it comes to schools – for which Ms Phillipson is responsible as Education Secretary – the government will publish new “gender questioning guidance” later this year to help them to navigate the court’s judgement.
And just to add to the swirl of uncertainty, it’s possible that a pile-on from Labour trans activists mightn’t be so easy for Sir Keir to avoid after all. WhatsApp messages recently leaked from a group chat of Labour MPs feature ministers Sir Chris Bryant and Dame Angela Eagle railing against Baroness Falkner, head of the EHRC, for agreeing that trans women would be banned from women’s single-sex spaces. The ministers urged colleagues to discuss their concerns, with Dame Angela arranging a meeting to “decide a way forwards” and “organise”. “We have to get on with doing the stuff we said we’d do in the manifesto,” she stated – including a “trans-inclusive” pledge to protect “the freedom for people to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity”.
The emergence of this plot – and Downing Street’s refusal so far to take action against it – has fuelled concerns that Sir Keir is failing to tackle the trans agenda within his own party.
Labour Women’s Declaration, a grassroots gender-critical group, urged him to do more to overcome “organisational capture” of Labour and the unions. Helen Joyce of the women’s rights group Sex Matters also exhorted him to stand up to those in his party who opposed the judgement. Referring to last year’s independent review which restricted access to puberty blockers for under-18s, Ms Joyce said: “Labour had the courage to unequivocally state that it supported the Cass Review and would implement its recommendations. It now needs to show the same courage in the face of confusion and on occasion outright misinformation about what the Supreme Court ruled.”
Trade union leaders, however, have suggested they would back Labour rebels in any push to water down the ruling. Speaking before last Saturday’s trans rights protest in London, Paul Fleming, the General Secretary of the Equity performing arts union, said: “Equity will, and every trade union should, stand in solidarity with those affected by the judgment.” The train drivers’ union Aslef wrote on X that “it is clear, we stand with the trans community”.
All of which raises the spectre of what happened after the introduction of the Equality Act 2010, when groups like Stonewall managed to persuade a wide range of public and private organisations that the law could somehow be ignored on the grounds that groups like Stonewall didn’t agree with it.
In 2021, for example, Akua Reindorf KC was commissioned by the University of Essex to review the Stonewall-influenced harassment and bullying policies that led to the “no-platforming” of two visiting gender-critical law professors. Her damning verdict was that one of those policy documents was “misleading” because it “states the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is”.
And it was precisely this attitude which landed so many gender-critical women in trouble for saying things about sex-based rights that were, in fact, perfectly lawful – as the courts kept pointing out in cases like Forstater vs GDE (2019) and Roz Admas vs Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (2024). Indeed, of the 3,750 cases the FSU has fought in the five years since its founding, about 40 per cent have involved coming to the defence of women who expressed their belief that sex is real, binary and immutable.
That 40 per cent figure has been a constant since 2020, but we expect it to decline in the wake of last week’s judgement. In future, it should be harder for organisations such as the NHS to put women through gruelling disciplinary processes for say, objecting to having to share single-sex shower rooms with men – provided, of course, that Sir Keir’s “clarity” isn’t undermined by the many intermediaries that still stand between the Supreme Court and the everyday UK workplace.
