Trans people feel betrayed by the current stance of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, India Willoughby has said.
In an exclusive interview with The London Economic, the broadcaster and prominent trans activist claimed Keir Starmer had “turned his back” on trans people at a time of intensifying government rhetoric to exclude the community.
Her comments follow the prime minister’s Tory party conference speech, in which he claimed the public had been “bullied” into believing that “people can be any sex they want to be”.
Sunak, who added that “men are men” and “women are women”, reiterated plans announced last Tuesday that would see trans women banned from female hospital wards in an apparent shift to the right wing of his party.
According to data published by the Home Office, there’s been a significant increase in hate crimes against trans people which could partly be down to public discussion by politicians.
Figures reveal a total of 145,214 offences were recorded in England and Wales in the year ending March 2023, down 5 per cent from 153,536 in the previous 12 months.
But religious hate crimes were up by nine per cent to 9,387 offences, while transgender hate crimes increased by 11 per cent, to 4,732.
Willoughby, the world’s first transgender national newsreader, slammed the Labour leader for back-pedalling a number of key election pledges introduced to boost the rights of trans people.
In January, Labour failed to oppose the government’s use of a Section 35 order to prevent Scotland from passing the Gender Recognition Reform bill, with only 11 MPs rebelling against the party.
The bill, which would have made it easier for trans people to update their birth certificates, was blocked by the Scotland secretary Alastair Jack over fears it could impact the “operation of Great Britain-wide equalities legislation.”
“I just think it’s a crying shame. Labour is built on sticking up for those who don’t have access to power, don’t have representation, the vulnerable and weakest in our society,” she said.
“For Labour to be turning its back on the most marginalised minority in 2023 at this time when we are facing such persecution – it’s disgusting. There’s no other word for it.
“I do hope that once Labour win the election – and I do think they will win the election – that they might redress it and find some way to help the trans community.”
Starmer has also ruled out self-identification for trans people, despite pledging to stick to the party’s 2019 manifesto commitment to de-medicalise the process.
It means that if Labour wins the next election, individuals will be unable to legally change their gender without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
“We are actually going backwards on LGBT rights generally, and trans specifically. It’s a deliberate policy by the conservatives, I’m sorry to say,” Willoughby told The London Economic.
“They’ve never really been friends of the LGBT community – they’ve been in power when certain things have passed – but they’ve actually only done that with a degree of reluctance because they can see the public’s attitude has changed.
“Sadly, for the trans community at the moment, the soundings coming for Keir Starmer and the Labour Party – and you would think that the Labour Party would be natural champions of the trans community with us being a minority – I’m afraid he is bottled it,” she added.
“He’s dropped his pledge to support the trans community and self ID. So the immediate landscape for the trans community doesn’t look good, but I do think it will become right in the end.”
Starmer recently altered his stance on the question of what constitutes a woman, claiming that “a woman is an adult female” having previously said 99.9 per cent of women “haven’t got a penis”.
Willoughby, who remains under police protection following a death threat from neo-Nazi group, National Action, also took aim at Labour MP Rosie Duffield.
Duffield, who recently said the party had a “woman problem”, has repeatedly been criticised for calling trans women “male bodied” after a Twitter thread in which she revealed she holds “gender critical” beliefs.
The MP for Canterbury recently claimed the majority of people share her view that trans women should be banned from “refuges, women’s prisons, single sex-wards and school toilets, despite data from YouGov published in 2020.
“The fact they will tolerate Rosie Duffield in the party is just sickening. If she was talking in an equivalent way about any other minority – black people or Jewish people – she would have been kicked out of the party,” Willoughby added.
“But for some reason, at the moment, because it’s been made socially acceptable, it’s okay to do it to trans people.
“There’s definitely a horrible feeling of betrayal. When you have an ally, the whole point of having an ally is that an ally is going to be there in the worst of times.
“It’s very easy to be an ally when things are middling or good. But when the going gets tough, you stick around – and that’s not what Labour have done. They’ve run away.”
However, for Willoughby, who slammed Suella Braverman’s comments about the trans community at the Tory Party conference, the media plays a significant role in fuelling transphobic narratives.
A report published by the United Nations’ Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, found abusive rhetoric by politicians and the media had fostered hate speech against LGBT people.
“I don’t the blame public for this at all. The recent survey looking at national attitudes showed that the perception of trans people in Britain has plummeted over the last three or four years, and that’s shocking,” Willoughby said.
“But it’s no surprise because if you’re being crushed over the head, every single day, even if you’re not paying direct attention to that particular subject, inevitably it seeps into your consciousness.
“If it’s on the BBC. If it’s on ITV. If it’s on Twitter. If it’s on every newspaper that you look at that trans people in some way are a threat to society, or dangerous or grooming children – that’s going to seep into your thought process of what trans people are.
“And compounding that is the fact that in the UK media at the moment we have an effective trans ban,” she added.
“In British mainstream media, there are no trans reporters, no columnists, no editors, no presenters – we’ve all been shoved out. So you have this double whammy of a torrent of propaganda coming at you and nobody there to counter it.”
Research compiled by Paul Baker, a professor at Lancaster University, revealed the British press had published more than 6,000 articles about trans people between 2018-19, many of them written “in order to be critical of trans people”.
Meanwhile, figures published by the charity Mermaids in 2019 revealed trans people were increasingly written about in negative ways, described as having a “propensity to be offended” in 586 cases.
For Willoughby, with the erosion of trans rights and harmful narratives pedalled by right-wing media outlets seemingly interlinked, the need for hope is greater than ever.
“There is absolutely a reason to be positive. I have no doubt that trans people will come through this. This is just like a horrible period created by vile individuals that we’re having to go through,” she told The London Economic.
“I think history is going to see these people for what they are, and let me tell you – if you are supporting the gender critical movement who oppose trans people at the moment – you are on the wrong side of history.
“Trans people are a naturally occurring part of human beings. We exist in every culture, we’ve existed in every timeframe in history – we’re not going anywhere.”
Related: Sunak ‘sanctioning persecution’ of trans community – Willoughby
