Labour’s clumsy manifesto says nothing about protecting women’s spaces | Express comment | Comment

Labor’s manifesto promises to halve violence against women and girls, protect against sexual harassment and ensure everyone feels safe walking on the streets. But it also promises to make it easier and simpler for any man to obtain a certificate attesting that he is a woman.

Faced with rapists who want to be incarcerated in women’s prisons, transvestites who present themselves in women’s locker rooms, and men with mental health problems who react with anger when their female colleagues do not invite them to share the women’s bathroom , Sir Keir Starmer’s compassion for women evaporates and his outspokenness becomes vague and evasive.

Labor says it is proud of the Equality Act, and it is a good thing it should be. But over the past 14 years, it has become clear that the law protecting women’s rights needs to be strengthened. Public support for transgender rights has collapsed: 47% think they have gone too far, and support for changing their birth certificate has halved – from 56% in 2016 to just 24 % Today.

Yet Starmer wants to make it even easier for a man to obtain a birth certificate certifying that he is a woman. There is already no need for surgery or medical treatment. Could a simple online conversation with a doctor now be enough? What will the certificate mean? Will this give men the right to compete in women’s sports and share women’s locker rooms and showers? Will this give a male police officer the right to strip search female detainees?

The manifesto remains silent on this point. He pledges to “continue to support the implementation of the exceptions relating to single-sex sex” in the equality law. But this far-fetched promise won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on if gender self-identification ends up being adopted through the back door.