Keir Starmer U-turns to say trans ladies will not be ladies after Supreme Court ruling | EUROtoday

Sir Keir Starmer not believes trans ladies are ladies within the wake of final week’s landmark Supreme Court ruling.

The prime minister has beforehand mentioned that “trans women are women”, however requested to repeat that assertion on Tuesday he pointed to the judgment, which dominated the time period girl referred to organic intercourse, saying it had “answered that question”.

Downing Street later confirmed the U-turn. Asked if the PM nonetheless believed {that a} transgender girl was a lady, his official spokesman mentioned: “No, the Supreme Court judgment has made clear that when looking at the Equality Act, a woman is a biological woman. That is set out clearly by the court judgment.”

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Conservative chief Kemi Badenoch accused Sir Keir of peddling a “shameless work of fiction” over his U-turn.

She added: “Labour now says that they know what a woman is and that transgender people should use services and facilities designated to their biological sex. They’ve never said this before. This is a U-turn but we welcome it.”

His feedback got here simply hours after the equalities minister Bridget Phillipson mentioned trans ladies ought to use male bogs, including that “services should be accessed on the basis of biological sex”.

Later she praised JK Rowling after she was requested within the Commons concerning the Harry Potter creator, a long-time campaigner on this difficulty.

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She mentioned she paid “tribute to all of those women”, who included Ms Rowling and the swimmer Sharron Davies.

In final week’s long-awaited judgment, the UK’s highest court docket confirmed the phrases “woman” and “sex” within the 2010 Equality Act “refer to a biological woman and biological sex”.

Asked concerning the difficulty on Tuesday, Sir Keir mentioned {that a} girl was an “adult female”. And, in his first public feedback for the reason that justices’ choice on 16 April, the Labour chief mentioned he was “really pleased” with the readability supplied by the court docket’s ruling.

He mentioned the judgment was a “welcome step forward” including: “It’s real clarity in an area where we did need clarity, I’m pleased it’s come about. We need to move and make sure that we now ensure that all guidance is in the right place according to that judgment.”

In March 2022, earlier than he entered No 10, Sir Keir informed The Times that “a woman is a female adult, and in addition to that trans women are women, and that is not just my view, that is actually the law”.

A yr later he appeared to alter his place, stating that 99.9 per cent of girls “haven’t got a penis”.

In latest days former Supreme Court decide Jonathan Sumption has warned that organisations are probably misinterpreting the landmark ruling, arguing it didn’t create an obligation to offer single-sex areas.

Instead, Lord Sumption argued that whereas many have taken the ruling to imply that service suppliers are obliged to offer single-sex areas based mostly on organic intercourse, the ruling meant that excluding transgender individuals from single-sex areas was allowed, and never a breach of the 2010 Equality Act.