Our Manifesto Commitments
“Reform the gender recognition process to remove the requirement for medical reports, recognise non-binary identities in law, and remove the spousal veto.”
Having clearly learned nothing from Scotland, what the above means is that we want to introduce self-ID – and what self-ID means is allowing any man for any reason, no questions asked, to change his legal sex to female. Why exactly this should be allowed we remain unable or unwilling to explain. Self-ID is extremely unpopular with the public, has significant implications for the rights of women, and the problem it aims to solve is not evident (the current process for obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate is not intrusive – though repeated claims to the contrary should raise the question: why shouldn’t it be?) – yet we refuse to listen.
What purpose there would be for recognising non-binary identities in law is also something we seem incapable of explaining – really, what does it even mean? It makes as much sense as demanding legal recognition for goths or elves.
There is no such thing as a “spousal veto”. What currently exists is a six-month pause in the process of obtaining a full Gender Recognition certificate (an interim GRC is provided in the meantime) that allows the non-transitioning spouse (usually a woman) to decide whether to remain in a marriage that has fundamentally changed. It is effectively a spousal exit clause and is about consent. A marriage is of course a contract between two people, who are supposed to have equal say in that marriage – what we are advocating for is the right for a person to change their legal sex without even notifying their spouse first. Why is again unclear.
“Ban all forms of conversion therapies and practices”
In the six years since a ban was first proposed, we have refused to explain what needs to be banned that isn’t already illegal, define any of our terms – “transgender”, “gender identity”, “conversion therapy/practices”, or provide any examples of trans conversion therapy even happening in the UK. This will not make for good law.
Practically all forms of gay conversion therapy are already banned and there is little evidence that it remains a significant problem in the UK. However, a conversion therapy bill would have long ago already become law were it not for the deliberate conflation of sexual orientation and transgender identities by activist groups.
What a trans conversion therapy ban will do is effectively outlaw anything that isn’t unquestioning affirmation of a person’s self-declared trans identity. The Cass Review – a four year, independent review of gender identity services for children and young people – found that a chilling effect in which clinicians are reluctant to work with those questioning their gender already exists, even without a ban. It also concluded that existing professional guidance already protects against conversion therapy.
We know from the Cass Review, and other research, that a disproportionate number of children and young adults presenting with gender dysphoria have numerous other confounding mental health or family issues, are autistic, or are same-sex attracted. We also know that gender confusion is often just a passing phase, and for children usually resolves itself through puberty.
As a result of the Cass Review, which found “no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress”, the routine prescribing of puberty blockers on the NHS has been ended, and an emergency ban is in place to prevent unregulated private clinics from prescribing them. Sweden, Finland, and Denmark have also restricted the use of puberty blockers, whilst New Zealand, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands are also questioning their use.
So are we still in favour of giving puberty blockers and hormones to anybody that wants them? Whilst not in our manifesto, that’s technically still our policy. If it is, then what our policy to ban conversion therapy risks doing is enabling a different kind of conversion therapy on gender non-conforming gays and lesbians and other vulnerable young people. And if it isn’t, then our unwillingness to publicly say so – we haven’t even made an official statement on the Cass Review – makes our conversion therapy ban a very unserious policy.
This example of “conversion therapy” from the Ban Conversion Therapy campaign shows that banning normal exploratory therapy is exactly what they mean by a trans conversion therapy ban:
Do we think that is conversion therapy?
We’ve put mental health front and centre of our election campaign, but we really lack credibility by continuing to treat what is a complex medical issue as an equalities one.
A Failure To Engage With The Issues Makes Our Party Look Foolish
Christine Jardine’s angry, evasive, incoherent and self-contradictory interview with Michael Portillo and Nana Akua on GB News recently was a masterclass in ideological capture.
Affronted at even being asked about such issues – despite them falling under her brief as the party’s Women and Equalities Spokesperson (she said she’d rather talk about dentists) – Christine refused to give a direct answer as to the party’s policy on gender recognition certificates, and refused to give a direct answer about whether any males, however they identify, should be allowed into women’s prisons – though seemed to be suggesting that they should.
Christine appeared to trying to make the point that “transition” was a serious, complex thing that people did not undergo lightly, though gave the impression that she believes that when someone “transitions”, their biological sex changes. The latter position is deeply alarming, the former is completely undermined as a safeguarding argument by self-ID – “transition” becoming meaningless if legally changing sex is to involve nothing more than signing a bit of paper.
Despite it having nothing to do with what she was being asked, she talked about taking the “positives” out of the Cass Review, as if the whole thing was just some sort of unfortunate inconvenience to the aim of medicalising more children. The key findings of the review were not mentioned.
She finished the interview by inadvertently arguing against her earlier implied support for self-ID. When asked by Portillo how many medical doctors should be required to get a gender recognition certificate, a single doctor or a panel, she failed to realise that according to party policy her answer should have been “none” and said that this was something for medical practitioners not politicians to decide.
Helen Morgan’s brief interview with Tom Swarbrick on LBC last week was more clueless than car crash, but equally demonstrative of the party’s failure to engage constructively with the issues. Falling back on the standard emotive buzzwords of “toxicity”, “vulnerable minority” and “intrusive” in lieu of substantive argument, it amounted to little more than waffle from someone who evidently neither understands nor really believes in what she has been told to say.
Paradoxical Positions
How can trans issues be simultaneously unimportant in the grand scheme of things, yet so important to the party that it is the sole policy area to which no discussion or dissent is allowed?
Why are we unable to give clear answers to even basic questions about our policies when asked? We frequently seem oblivious to opposing perspectives or evidence contrary to our stated positions. We obfuscate and deflect; “culture war”, “distraction”, and “toxic debate” our trusty trump cards whenever questions get slightly too pressing – yet ultimately, it seems that we’re just unable to argue for our policies on their merits.
None of this stuff is on our leaflets.
We can speak only in mantras and cliches if we wish, but the issues don’t simply go away because we wish them so. We are a party with its head in the sand and it undermines everything else we say and do.
Democracy Coma 
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