Wes Streeting is right to apologise for saying trans women are women – now Labour & Harry Potter stars need to too
It’s clear the wounds will take many years to heal, not least in the Labour Party
AS mea culpas go, they do not get much more stark than Wes Streeting’s about-turn on trans issues on this week’s edition of Never Mind The Ballots.
When I asked him on The Sun’s YouTube show whether “leading figures” like himself were part of the decades-long problem of silencing any critic of the sweeping transgender debate, he replied: “Absolutely”.
It’s not very often you get such an honest answer from a politician.
Streeting was one of the first Labour MPs to actually say what his boss Sir Keir Starmer could not — that “men have penises, women have vaginas.”
But he has a notable track record of being a hardliner on this issue — long trumpeting Stonewall’s pernicious “trans women are women, get over it” slogan.
Which again he admitted was wrong and the issue, of course, is far more complex (or simple, depending on how you look at it.)
In 2017, Streeting backed a parliamentary attempt to hand young gender- questioning people “bridging hormones” when stuck in the ever-growing queue for now discredited NHS gender treatments.
As this week’s appalling and infuriating Cass Report into NHS failings lays bare, the evidence of this sort of treatment was built on sand and hundreds of gender-questioning kids are now scarred for life.
Streeting’s admission that his former employer Stonewall “haven’t been open enough to the argument and to the debate” is something of an understatement, but it’s a start.
He had the grace to admit that he was wrong, and for that he should be commended.
But critics say he is late to the party.
The Tories have been queuing to have a go ever since our show went out.
Victoria Atkins, the woman he is trying to replace as Health Secretary, hit out: “Labour has spent the last ten years trying to shut women up when it comes to this. They have been part of the ideology, the culture wars, creating an atmosphere of intimidation for anyone who dared to question this ideology.”
Feminist journo Julie Bindel, who has been on the right side of trans history, was even more scathing, hammering Streeting on X/Twitter for a 2008 snub: “When you were NUS President, I was no-platformed, alongside five fascist groups, for ‘transphobia’. I contacted you and asked for your help. You gave none.”
It’s clear the wounds will take many years to heal, not least in the Labour Party where hounded Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield was branded a bigot for standing up for the rights of biological women.
As she tweeted in response to the Cass Review: “As male leaders take applause, praise and credit for simply listening to an expert, and finally reading the room (the voters), where were the senior ‘sisters’? Perhaps less moral cowardice now?”
And it’s not just politics that needs to reflect: The luvvies deserve more than their fair share of shaming in this sorry saga.
Not least the little brats made multi-millionaires by the starring roles in the Harry Potter films.
Women’s rights champion JK Rowling has said her views have attracted “so many death threats I could paper the house with them” after she took up the cause.
And she was shunned and attacked by the actors who she made stars.
‘Condescending’
Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, accused people like Rowling of being “condescending” to young people who want to transition.
And chief of the do-gooders, woke-ahontas herself Emma Watson, joined in the act saying: “Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are.”
Author JK said yesterday: “If I sound angry, it’s because I’m bloody angry.
“Kids have been irreversibly harmed, and thousands are complicit, not just medics, but the celebrity mouthpieces, unquestioning media and cynical corporations.”
Taking aim at the kids she made stars, she said there would be no forgiveness after they “cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights.”
As Boris Johnson said this week, Rowling has “probably done more to encourage young people to read around the world than any other person I can think of . . . what’s so crazy is what she says about gender is, of course, what 95 per cent of the population secretly think.”
In the wake of the Cass Review, those thoughts must never be made to feel shameful again.
And it’s time for some more loudmouths to say sorry in Hollywood — as well as Westminster.
Don and Dave on hole new level
IT was not just Ukraine and Israel on the menu when Donald Trump and David Cameron dined at Trump’s luxury Palm Beach resort Mar-a-Lago on Monday night.
I hear the evening ended up sounding more like a chit-chat at the 19th hole.
The Foreign Office are being very tight lipped, but I can reveal Lord Cameron turned on the charm over the pair’s shared love of golf.
My mole says they spent a large part of dinner having an in-depth discussion about their favourite Scottish courses.
There was even a loose agreement to play at one of the ex/next US President’s two resorts north of the border next time he’s here in the UK.
Lord Dave will be hoping that goes a little better than the last time he took on a leader of the free world around 18 holes.
At the height of the Brexit referendum, he treated Barack Obama to a swing, just hours after the then-President’s incendiary intervention in the campaign to say Britain would be “at the back of the queue” if we voted Leave.
Cam was pleased to have “only lost one ball that day”, his spokesman said.
HOW are some Labour officials so bullish that under-fire Deputy Leader Angela Rayner is in the clear over claims she owes tax from the 2015 sale of her “home”?
I hear she has told them that she spent significant sums refurbishing the Stockport ex-council house to improve disabled access – and wrote off the cost against any capital gains tax owed.
She even hinted in a statement that her brother – who neighbours say really lived in the house – was a “dab hand at DIY.”
But apparently not everyone internally is convinced she’s out of the woods.
Not least after evidence emerged of Rayner in her own words saying her “home” was not the refurbished house she was registered as living in with the council, but her husband’s gaff down the road.
No wonder Sir Keir Starmer would not say he backed his deputy “100 per cent” when asked.