Badenoch steps up attack on Labour over transgender row

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has accused Labour ministers of lying about support for female-only spaces after Sir Keir Starmer’s U-turn on his views about transgender women.

Ahead of her weekly clash with Sir Keir at Prime Minister’s Questions, Mrs Badenoch hit out at equalities minister Bridget Phillipson for previously saying that transgender women could use female toilets.

The Tory leader said: “Yesterday, the Education Secretary claimed she’d always backed single-sex spaces for women.

“She lied.

“This is footage from last year where she says the exact opposite: that men should use women’s spaces if they have a certificate.”

She posted a link to a Times Radio interview from 2024 in which Ms Phillipson suggested that transgender women who had gone through the formal gender recognition process could use ladies’ toilets.

Mrs Badenoch and Ms Phillipson clashed in the Commons on Tuesday evening on the issue, with the minister saying the Government will “continue as before, working to protect single-sex spaces based on biological sex, now with the added clarity of this ruling” while offering trans people “the dignity that too often they were denied by the party opposite”.

Meanwhile Sir Keir faced criticism after welcoming the “real clarity” offered by the Supreme Court’s judgment, which he said made clear that “a woman is an adult female”.

It marked a shift from his previous views that “trans women are women”.

Author and women’s rights campaigner JK Rowling said: “Imagine being such a coward you can only muster the courage to tell the truth once the Supreme Court has ruled on what the truth is.”

The Supreme Court confirmed the terms “woman” and “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act “refer to a biological woman and biological sex”.

This means transgender women with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) can be excluded from single-sex spaces if “proportionate”.

Independent MP Rosie Duffield, who quit Labour last year, said Sir Keir’s U-turn on whether a transgender woman is a woman showed he was a “manager rather than a leader”.

The Prime Minister, who has previously said “trans women are women”, said the Supreme Court ruling had made clear that a woman was an adult female.

Ms Duffield told LBC Radio: “It’s just another sign of the Prime Minister’s lack of leadership skills. I’m bound to say that, he’s a manager rather than a leader.

“He responds and reacts rather than leads from the front, and this is what we’re seeing again from him.”

But policing minister Dame Diana Johnson defended Sir Keir, telling Times Radio: “I think the thing you can say about the Prime Minister is that he will always follow the law.

“And I think what happened last week, we had a very clear statement from the Supreme Court about what the law is and what the 2010 Equality Act actually says.

“So I’m really pleased now that there is that clarity about what a woman is and that it is biological sex that we should be looking at when we are – in terms of policing – when we’re looking at the issues around, say, strip searching.”