Sir Keith Starmer was ridiculed again on Sunday night after clarifying his stance on transgender issues by saying that “of course” 99.9 percent of women “don’t have a penis.” The Labor leader is under pressure to define his party’s position on gender identity after the fierce row in Scotland.
Sir Keir has also been warned by party strategists that he risks losing the next general election if he continues to raise questions about how to define a woman.
Last month, he seemed to change his stance, hinting that he could abandon his commitment to introduce self-declaration.
Sir Keir has previously been reluctant to say whether a woman can have a penis – which has been labeled “dystopian” by a critical Labor MP.
He also said in 2021 that it was “not right” to say that only women have a cervix.
But in an interview with the Sunday Times, the Labor leader said: “For 99.9 per cent of women it’s completely organic… of course they don’t have a penis.”
A Tory insider said Sir Keir’s indecisiveness would be a “nightmare” for the country if he came to power, adding: “He doesn’t even know one end of his elbow from the other let alone “basic biological facts. He would be a nightmare for the country if he ever came close to number 10.”
And Dr Anthony Hinton, a consultant surgeon, tweeted: “Keir Starmer claims 0.1 percent of women have a penis.
“I am in my 40th year as a doctor, studied medicine for 5 years and was top of my class for biology. Never knew that 1 in 1,000 women has a penis.”
Sir Keir also said there should be no “rollback” of women’s rights in the transgender debate.
“There are still a lot of battles that have to go on for women and I don’t think we should reverse anything,” he said. Nicola Sturgeon’s recent resignation as SNP leader and Scotland’s First Minister came in the wake of a row over the Scottish Government’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill.
Sir Keir acknowledged that Labor had learned from it.
He said: “If you can’t take the public on a journey of reform then you’re probably not on the right track. And that is why I think there should be a collective reset in Scotland.”
Conservative MP Mark Jenkinson said: “100 per cent of women don’t have a penis. Sir Keir still doesn’t understand. He tries to imply that he has changed his mind, but people are not fooled by his constant attempts to ride two horses. As soon as you allow one man to declare that he is a woman, and violate the protection and space that entails, you have set aside the rights of women.”