Keir Starmer has thrown one of his MPs under the bus during an interview with Andrew Marr on day two of Labour's conference. Unrepentant feminist Rosie Duffield has repeatedly fallen foul of trans activists with her supposedly 'controversial' views about protecting the sanctity and identity of womanhood. The Canterbury MP skipped the conference due to ongoing threats against her from trans activists - let's just call them transfascists - and Marr was keen to get the leader's views on her stance.
"Is it transphobic to say 'only women have a cervix'?" Marr asked, referring to one of Duffield's most famous tweets. Starmer was clearly uncomfortable with the question, but instead of sitting on the fence he leapt off it and came down firmly on the trans side: "It is something that shouldn't be said, it is not right". Cue cries of anguish from feminists everywhere - and quite rightly so.
Little wonder that Starmer was reluctant to explain why such a statement was wrong. He's definitely not following the science here...
On Monday morning Starmer's front bench colleague Rachel Reeves was asked a similar question by LBC's Nick Ferrari. The shadow chancellor's epic stuttering in response to the question was comedy gold, but her desperate attempt to sidestep the question was still a far better course of action than her leader's cut and dried anti-female stance.
Also asked the question was Reeve's understudy Bridget Phillipson. The MP for Houghton and Sunderland South actually did a much better job than both her superiors and successfully batted away questions from TalkRadio's Julia Hartley-Brewer...
While fence-sitting on the issue appeases all and is clearly a more advisable approach than Starmer's disgraceful anti-feminist response, why must Labour politicians steadfastly refuse to recognise a simple biological fact? While we don't stand with Rosie Duffield on much, if anything else, she is spot on in this debate.