IT has been a little over a week since the Conservative Party’s 14-year reign deservedly came crashing down around them. And yet, like many voters across Scotland and beyond, there is little joy or excitement for me in the government that has come to replace it.
That isn’t to say there are not rare exceptions to the coterie of Yes Men and nodding dogs that have swarmed to the Labour Party in recent years, but regardless of their individual contributions, it is an inescapable fact that Keir Starmer’s “changed” Labour Party continues to offer much the same problems as the Conservatives that came before them – including the fact that, like those who sought to play culture war politics over engaging with real issues, the contemporary Labour Party presents a sustained and material threat to LGBTQ+ people across the United Kingdom.
You won’t find a commitment to ending the outrageous two-child benefit cap here, no. Instead Labour have decided that what requires most urgency in their first week in power is a move to solidify the Conservative government’s reckless ban on healthcare for young transgender people.
Wes Streeting, the UK Government’s shiny new Secretary of State for Health, has busied himself with the kind of discriminatory health policies that many people insisted would be swiftly dropped once Labour had secured power, specifically a restriction on access to puberty blockers that only targets transgender youth.
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One would think that, were puberty blockers as “experimental” and “dangerous” as they are gleefully portrayed by right-wing hacks, that the ban would extend to cisgender children with precocious puberty too. That would be the logical outcome, were the medication found to be truly detrimental to those using it.
But alas, no. Instead, it is to be deemed safe for one group of young people, and snatched away from another. Which really only leaves the possibility that such interventions from the new Health Secretary are driven by ideological, and not scientific, motivations.
Even Hillary Cass, future peer and handpicked author of the widely discredited Cass Report, could not find sufficient reason to recommend an outright ban on puberty blockers for trans youth, but that has not stopped Labour from taking up the mantle of their predecessors and allegedly seeking to turn what was a temporary ban into a permanent one.
And within Labour, opposition to the existence of trans people is still treated as just a ruddy good debate and not, as it is at its heart, a hate movement.
The Health Secretary Wes Streeting has pledged to permanently ban puberty blockers
Deputy Leader Anglea Rayner, while speaking with Channel 4 News at the end of June, claimed that millionaire author JK Rowling – who has become synonymous with anti-trans activism – was in fact misunderstood.
Rayner claimed the author’s position had been mischaracterised, and that “she says she supports the rights of trans people as well, so I don’t think there is that much distance between us on that”.
Okey-doke. Let me go ahead and just pull up Rowling’s Twitter feed and … yes, there it is.
At the time of writing, her feed consists of calling trans women “trans-identified males”, pushing links to a crank science group accused of promoting conversion therapy, and calling a newly elected trans Labour councillor a “crossdressing” man.
If the extent of expert analysis we can expect from the Labour Party now is, “Well, they say they actually support you, so who could say”, it will be a rough few years for anyone with a vested interest in reality.
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The fact is that the so-called “trans issue” is just not important to most people. Poll after poll has shown that most are supportive of trans rights, and that the “gender debate” is not a priority to folk being hammered by the cost of living crisis and more. It is the purview of an obsessive group of middle-class campaigners whose reach far extends beyond their limited numbers.
Despite that, Labour is prepared to overshadow its early days in government by ruthlessly committing to protect a desperate Conservative decision, pushed through by a party with little else to campaign on; a decision that relies on junk science and willfully setting aside the needs of young trans people to play to an audience of elitist media commentators.
It’s sickening. It will be a stain against the party forever more. And it was all there, black and white, in the manifesto that Labour voters supported. I don’t know why anyone who campaigned for Labour and watched as they equivocated on human rights, at home and abroad, ever expected better. And that’s before we even get into how Streeting’s love for privatisation poses an even greater threat to healthcare for everyone.
Labour have made clear they will not re-examine the veto used to block Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, nor will it challenge the outdated rhetoric of their Conservative colleagues. Instead they seem content to continue punching down at a minority group, with the backing of the press, over standing up to the bullies.
The Conservative Party’s puberty blocker ban was a final twist of the knife from a desperate departing government that was defined by incompetence, ignorance and intolerance.
Labour, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to grab the handle, and twist just a little further still.
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