The left-wing Labour Party may look to scrap government guidance telling schools to teach children that there are only two biological sexes, which would easily be overturned given the failure of the Conservative government to put the policy into law.
Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said that if elected — as is widely predicted to happen — a Labour government would review guidance from Rishi Sunak’s government which told educators to refrain from teaching far-left gender ideology as a fact.
This included the theory that people can somehow be born into the wrong body, can change their sexual identity, or can inhabit newfangled sexual grey areas such as “non-binary”. The guidance also told teachers to clarify for students that there are only two sexes, male and female.
Yet given the refusal of the Conservatives to codify such positions into law and merely lay them out in the technically optional guidance, the next government will have little in the way of impediments from issuing new guidance.
When pressed multiple times by the BBC on Sunday on whether a Labour government would retract the guidance, Phillipson refused to give a straight answer but suggested that a change may be on the table.
“Many aspects of the draft (guidance) had good and straightforward principles in it, other elements of it I think drifted far too much into partisan and unnecessary language that I think makes it harder for schools to navigate this,” she said, adding that Labour would carry out a “consultation” on the issue before making a final decision.
However, the likely next education secretary said that “there are trans people within society and their existence should be recognised,” while claiming that the issue has become a “political football”.
“This drifts sometimes into a slightly bizarre conversation. There are trans people, they have a right for their existence to be recognised, many trans people are vulnerable and are deserving of support.
“Alongside that, we’ve got to make sure that schools have got clear guidance about how best to support children and young people that are experiencing distress and issues around their wellbeing.”
Current Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said the comments from Phillipson “confirmed that a Labour Government would play politics with the lives of our children by ripping up guidance on Gender Questioning Children, effectively allowing contested gender ideology to be taught in the classroom.”
The Labour Party’s messaging on gender has been somewhat confused under Sir Kier Starmer, as he has attempted to appear to the public as more moderate than his socialist predecessor as leader Jeremy Corbyn.
After initially claiming that “99.9 per cent” of women could not have penises, Starmer later came to the position that a woman is an “adult female“.
The increasingly woke metropolitan party also suggested in May that it would pave the way to make it easier for gender self-identification before backtracking on the plans last month.
Yet in another turnaround, the Guardian reported on Monday that Labour would seek to “modernise” the process of legal gender changes, for example removing the need for multiple doctors to sign off and slashing the requirement to demonstrate that an individual has been living as the opposite gender for two years.
While the change will likely win favours with the party’s base in liberal cities like London, Labour has faced some criticism from the feminist left in the UK, including from J.K. Rowling.
The Harry Potter author said over the weekend that despite her opposition to the Tories and her long history as a Labour supporter, she would now “struggle” to vote for the party, accusing Labour of “abandoning women” in favour of transgender ideology.
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