SARAH VINE: Not only does Starmer have a fundamental disregard for women's rights, he has an even more fundamental disregard for their opinions. That's why I'll never vote for him
Eleven days to go, and there’s a growing sense that Rishi Sunak might as well just give up, save us all the hassle – and hand the keys to Downing Street straight to Sir Keir Starmer.
The Labour leader could unveil a set of horns beneath that thick thatch of his and still, it seems, voters would rather burn in a hell of their own making than entrust the smouldering remains of the Conservative Party with another term in office.
Even those who will get clobbered by VAT on private school fees and other tax hikes (as yet unspecified) are undeterred.
Starmer is remarkably coy on the whole issue of protecting women’s rights in sport and safe spaces such as prisons and single-sex changing rooms, writes Sarah Vine
In the London constituency of Kensington and Bayswater – once home to David Cameron’s so-called Notting Hill Tories – Labour’s candidate is feted at lavish fundraising dinner parties in multi-million-pound mansions.
Their owners have everything to lose from a Labour government. But they don’t care: shy Tories have given way to embarrassed, regretful Tories and, in many cases, hopping-mad Tories.
When even stucco-fronted Kensingtonians pivot to Labour, you know things are bad. But can you blame them? They feel let down and humiliated by the shambles of the last few years.
All Cameron’s ‘detoxifying’ of the brand (and whatever you think of him, ultimately he did a good job on that front) has been undone. Voting Tory has become about as socially acceptable as Prince Andrew at an under-18s disco.
Just because Starmer is getting such an easy ride doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about. Indeed, there is a lot about the Labour leader and his allies that’s deeply questionable, not least his assertion that Jeremy Corbyn would have made a better prime minister than Boris Johnson.
Such a view should focus voters’ minds – like his earlier confession that he would never resort to private healthcare if a loved one desperately needed an operation.
Even more worrying is his stance on women. Specifically, whether they can or cannot have penises, and whether only women can have cervixes. Indeed, on the whole issue of protecting women’s rights in sport and safe spaces such as prisons and single-sex changing rooms, Starmer is remarkably coy.
Of course, when people such as myself (ie Conservatives) mention this, we’re branded bigots.
Kemi Badenoch, one of the few Tory ministers who may keep their seat, has faced a barrage of abuse over her sensible and uncompromising stance on this issue.
It’s easy for Starmer’s team to dismiss so-called ‘Right-wing’ voices. But when the criticism comes from his own side, it’s harder to shut out.
That is why, once again, I take my hat off to J.K. Rowling for swimming against the prevailing tide of political lemmings. She has called out Starmer for ‘abandoning women’, and having a ‘dismissive and often offensive’ approach to concerns about women’s rights ‘for single-sex spaces’ and for ‘the right to speak about our own bodies as we please’.
She listed the number of times Starmer and his Shadow Cabinet have made it hard for her to think about voting Labour. David Lammy, calling gender-critical women ‘dinosaurs hoarding rights’ and saying that a cervix ‘is something you can have following various procedures and hormone treatments’. Or Lisa Nandy, who thinks trans men and women should be ‘in a prison of their choosing’. Or Anneliese Dodds, who says the definition of a woman depends on the context.
As Rowling observes, it would be laughable were it not so tragic.
The final insult came during BBC1’s Question Time last Thursday. Asked if he’d changed his view on women and cervixes, Starmer explained that, as far as the biology was concerned: ‘I agree with what Tony Blair said... in relation to men having penises and women having vaginas.’ Starmer and Blair: the vagina monologues. The mind boggles.
But what is most offensive about that statement is when, three years ago, Labour MP Rosie Duffield argued only women have a cervix, Starmer hung her out to dry.
But when a man – Blair – points this out to him, he agrees.
In other words, this is a politician who not only has a fundamental disregard for women’s rights, but an even more fundamental disregard for their opinions – unless they are spoken by a man, in which case he agrees. The fact he’s not even aware of it only makes it worse.
This is the kind of everyday sexism women face all the time.
If a man says it, it’s right, but if a woman says it, it’s a joke.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve mentioned something in a room of men, only for it to be ignored until a man makes the same point a few minutes later.
Bottom line, I’m just as furious with the Conservatives as anyone else – perhaps even more so, given my own personal circumstances. But, like J.K., I won’t vote for a man who shows such little respect for women.
That's killer filler
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Donald Sutherland in 1978 sci-fi classic Invasion of the Bodysnatchers as Matthew Bennell
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