'NO MORAL COURAGE'
Kemi Badenoch accuses Keir Starmer of having ‘no balls’ after PM’s painfully slow U-turn on definition of a woman
The PM previously said that 'trans women are women' but has now changed his mind
SIR Keir Starmer was accused of "not having the balls" by Kemi Badenoch today, as the Tory leader launched a scathing attack on the PM's trans record.
At PMQs, a fired up Ms Badenoch slammed Sir Keir for "bending the knee" to "every passing fad" as she blasted his past failure to back the protection of single-sex spaces.
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She also hit out at the PM as he refused to apologise to ex-Labour MP Rosie Duffield, who was "hounded" from the party over her gender critical views.
Ms Badenoch said: ""This is a choice between a Conservative party that stood up for common sense and a Labour Party that bends the knee to every passing fad.
"This is a question about moral courage, about doing the right thing, even when it is difficult.
"The truth is he doesn't have the balls.
"The Prime Minister only tells people what they want to hear.
"He is a weather vane who twists in the wind. He cheered an ideology that denied safe spaces to women and girls because he thought it was cool to do so."
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The Tory leader added: "He hounded a brave female MP out of his party for telling the truth he accepts now and now he's hiding behind the Supreme Court judgement."
Ms Badenoch demanded Sir Keir "apologise to the very brave Member for Canterbury, for hounding her out of the Labour Party, simply for telling the truth."
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Scrambling to respond, the PM said: "I have always approached this on the basis that we should treat everyone with dignity and respect, whatever their different views.
"My approach will be to support the ruling to protect single sex spaces and treat everybody with dignity and respect, and I believe as a consensus in this House, and the country for that approach."
Meanwhile, Health Secretary Wes Streeting today said trans women are "by definition" not women.
Commenting for the first time since last week's Supreme Court ruling, Mr Streeting said the Supreme Court was right.
He told The Sun: "By definition trans women are trans women.
"I have always and will always respect people's identities and I have no trouble whatsoever referring to trans women by their names, referring to them as women as shorthand, or using pronouns like she and her.
"I don't think that's an issue and I think the vast majority of people in our country would also want to be respectful in that way.
"But by definition they're not the same as biological women."
It comes after Sir Keir finally broke his silence on the judgement yesterday, declaring he welcomes the "clarity" it brings and stating that a woman is an "adult female".
The PM previously argued "trans women are women" and even said that one in every thousand women can have a penis.
But back from his Easter holidays yesterday, Sir Keir said that "a woman is an adult female, and the court has made that absolutely clear".
However, Harry Potter author JK Rowling has now hit out against the PM despite his latest comments.
Posting on X, formerly Twitter, she 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."
Rowling has been a long standing advocate for women's group For Women Scotland, which she is also believed to have backed with funding.
The author has bravely stood firm in the face of online pressure for years.
In another tweet last night, Rowling said: "Women have fought (and are still fighting) the single biggest land grab on their rights in my lifetime.
"Some have sacrificed their livelihoods and safety to combat a pernicious ideology that has infiltrated elite institutions, including government."
Cowardly Keir Starmer has fuelled trans activist bullies
By Julie Bindel
IT has taken almost a week for our Prime Minister to comment on the most important legal decision since he became PM, namely the Supreme Court's clarification of the law, confirming that "sex" in the 2010 Equality Act means biological sex.
Today, Sir Keir Starmer (who once claimed that one in a thousand women has a penis) was asked by a local news channel whether he believed a trans woman was a woman.
: “I think the Supreme Court has answered that question.”
Pressed to say whether that meant he did not believe a trans woman is a woman, he said: “A woman is an adult female, and the court has made that absolutely clear.”
As if this man – who is a senior barrister – needed a court to tell him what a woman is.
His refusal to stand with common sense and women’s rights has given fuel to the trans activists who’ve spent the past few years bullying almost everyone into submission.
Now that the highest court in the land has confirmed what the law actually says, these extremists have taken to the streets, showing their true colours.
Protests held around the country since the legal decision have put the demonstrators’ misogyny on full display.
One sign at the protest in London’s Parliament Square targeted trans-exclusionary radical feminists and showed a hangman’s gallows alongside the slogan “The only good TERF is a - - - - one”. (Presumably, the mystery word is spelt DEAD).
Another showed an image of a man with a bloodied knife stuck in his eye.
It read: “Are you a transphobe? Why not try a D.I.Y. LOBOTOMY.”
Others revealed an obsessive focus on toilets, with #PeeForMe and slogans like: “Trans women are women.
“If you don’t like that, go s**t somewhere else.”
Also in evidence were calls to defecate “on a pile of Harry Potter books” or “on the head of another TERF”, as well as “Kill JK Rowling” and “Bring back witch burning: JK Rowling”.
Numerous statues were daubed with graffiti before thousands of trans rights protesters marched through central London on Saturday.
And despite the overt and explicit threats of violence to women, the main concern expressed by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was about statues: “Criminal damage like this, including to statues of men and women who fought for freedom and justice, like Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Millicent Fawcett, is disgraceful — it is right the police are investigating.”
Leaked WhatsApp messages by certain Labour ministers included an attack on Baroness Falkner, Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Like villagers with pitchforks screaming: “Burn the witch”, the words on the lips of the mob on London’s streets this weekend were “Trans Power”.
A power that has carried them far, causing women standing up for their rights to be arrested, sacked, kicked out of college, shunned from LGBT groups, ostracised and vilified in friendship groups.
That power was handed to them on a silver platter by the idiots in every single political party.
When it comes to contentious issues, we know that Starmer has no backbone.
He betrayed Rosie Duffield, refusing to intervene against the horrendous bullying and threats of violence she endured because of her stance defending women on the issue.
And in the end, he — and the Labour Party — lost her.
Cowards like Starmer have allowed themselves to be bullied into capitulation.
Violent rage
Middle-class progressives were happy to throw the rights of both women and LGB people away as they bleated about how trans women (biological men) were the most vulnerable, oppressed minority on the planet.
Hook, line and sinker, they fell for the lie that the oppressors were women, feminists.
Even though I voted Labour last year — because I believe in a welfare state — I’m not surprised the party has betrayed women in this way.
Nevertheless, we are owed a huge apology.
Starmer has had so much to say about Netflix show Adolescence and so-called “toxic masculinity” yet not a word about the heterosexual men screaming in our faces because they can no longer shut down our events when we keep them out.
The past few days have been like a condensation of the past 21 years, with the violent rage of men claiming to be women an indication that trans activists never expected anyone to dare stop them invading our spaces and stealing our rights.
The fact that Starmer caved on an issue so pivotal to the rights of 51 per cent of the planet proves he has no guts, no backbone and no integrity.
By waiting for the Supreme Court to tell him what a woman is, Starmer has allowed trans activists to bully the majority of Britain’s institutions, and its citizens, into capitulating to them.
As a result, women have suffered greatly — and he must not be let off the hook.
She also posted a picture on X of Sir Keir and other Labour MPs - including Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Angela Rayner - with previous quotes they have made in support of trans women.
Rowling accused them of siding "with the persecutors" and questioned whether any of them would "issue an apology or admit that they made a serious error in siding with well-funded activist groups lying about what the law actually said".
The author said that actions of the past have "had measurable, severe impact on some of society's most vulnerable women".
In 2020, the esteemed author slammed the growing trend of replacing "biological sex" with "gender identity".
It was Rowling's beloved group For Women Scotland which also launched a long-running legal battle with the Scottish government over how a "woman" was defined in Scottish law.
In the UK, a growing number of women have reported facing harassment, professional consequences, or social exclusion for expressing views on sex and gender that conflicted with prevailing trans-inclusive policies.
In 2019, Maya Forstater lost her job at a think tank after tweeting that biological sex is immutable, sparking a landmark tribunal case on free speech and gender beliefs.
In 2021, Rosie Duffield, a Labour MP, faced intense backlash and threats for stating that only women have cervixes, leading her to skip her party’s annual conference over safety concerns.
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That same year, Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor at the University of Sussex, resigned after facing student protests and threats over her gender-critical views.
And in 2022, NHS nurse Amy Gallagher launched legal action claiming she was subjected to harassment during diversity training for expressing that gender ideology conflicts with her Christian beliefs.
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