Inside the split over trans women that’s threatening to drive a wedge through Labour

The Labour party has been left split in two over the rights of trans women within women’s-only spaces, new polling has revealed.

A poll for Labour news site LabourList, shared exclusively with Metro, asked 1,300 people who identified themselves as party members if they agreed with the government’s approach to the decision.

While 42.7% of members said they believed trans women should be excluded from women-only spaces – the stance taken by Sir Keir Starmer’s government – 40.2% did not agree. Just over 17% said they don’t know.

It was an even closer result among men – just 0.6% separated men who agreed with the position and the slightly higher number who disagreed.

The polling comes months after the Supreme Court announced in a landmark decision that the words ‘sex’ and ‘women’ in the Equality Act 2010 should be defined in biological terms.

That meant trans women could legally be barred from women-only spaces, whether or not they possessed a gender recognition certificate.

The government immediately welcomed the ruling, saying it brought clarity to an issue at the centre of an often aggressive debate.

But in the months since Lord Hodge’s ruling, it appears the issue is far from settled.

The results from the Survation poll also found that the age groups of party members – of which there are around 309,000 in total – are split on the debate, with the majority of members aged 18 to 44 believing that the government’s stance was wrong, while members aged 45 to 65+ believe it was correct.

Trans people involved with LGBT+ Labour, the party’s queer member group, told Metro the divide is all too clear.

Georgia Meadows is LGBT+ Labour’s trans officer and the only trans person on the group’s National Committee.

Labour’s landslide election victory, which decisively swept the Conservatives out of power, gave her ‘hope’.

That hope didn’t last long. ‘They [the voters] really put their trust in us. They were hoping we’d be different, but a lot of what we’ve done is what the Tories would have,’ she told Metro.

Georgia, who has been a Labour member for three years, added: ‘A lot of the membership is trans-supportive, or at the least, neutral on the issue.

‘The few who are overtly transphobic are loud and well-funded.’

She described post-ruling comments from a No 10 spokesperson, saying explicitly Starmer does not believe trans women are women, as ‘disgusting and wholly against commitments [the PM] made to LGBT+ Labour’.

Steph Richards, a trans woman who serves as the chief executive of the advocacy group TransLucent, was put forward in July as a candidate for LGBT+ Labour’s women’s officer by the Trans Rights Alliance, a bloc of pro-trans members, only to face criticism from a gender-critical members group called LGB Labour.

She said: ‘I speak to lots of MPs, none of them that I’ve spoken to are happy, where we’re going at the moment, on numerous issues, Gaza in particular, but around benefits, around the cap benefit, winter fuel payment. What a disaster.

‘I think it reflects also where the party’s gone, from a socialist party to a light blue Tory.’

In the wake of the Supreme Court announcement, both the LGBT+ Labour annual general meeting (AGM) and the party’s annual Women’s Conference were suspended.

The decision to postpone the two events – which Labour’s governing body the National Executive Committee said was out of concern for the potential legal implications of the ruling – has been met with backlash from figures on both sides of the issue.

Labour Women’s Declaration, which describes itself as backing ‘sex-based rights’, said the postponement of the Women’s Conference was a ‘knee-jerk reaction’.

Reacting to the new poll, the group said the government’s response was ‘a complete vindication for us, although there can be no compensation for the years of abuse and vilification we have experienced within the party’.

They added: ‘We call on our Labour government to show leadership in this matter to those vocal Labour parliamentarians who are still refusing to accept the legal clarity of the ruling and have been demonstrating a clear ignorance of the law.’

Georgia, who is aiming to become co-chair of LGBT+ Labour’s committee, suggested the AGM was suspended to prevent a slate of pro-trans candidates from being voted in.

An email from organisers, reported by LabourList, said they were waiting for ‘clear, practical, and workable guidance’ from the Equality and Human Rights Committee (EHRC).

That guidance is now being developed ‘over the summer’, the equality watchdog said, after a consultation into the plans generated more than 50,000 responses.

‘Why I’ll never vote Labour again’

Katie Kneeves, 56, an ambassador at Cool 2b Trans, said she voted for Labour in 2024 for the first time in years.

She said: ‘I felt hopeful that trans people would not be treated as a political football. I even joined the Labour Party. How wrong I was.

‘I will never vote for Labour again while Keir Starmer is the Prime Minister and while Wes Streeting is the Health Secretary.’

In December, Streeting banned trans young people from being prescribed puberty blockers, which pause puberty, a move that one parent of a trans teen told Metro she ‘begged’ Streeting not to do.

Kneeves added: I’m excited by Your Party, as I hope it will put enough pressure on Starmer to stop chasing Reform voters and bring it back to being a left-wing party.’

Heather Herbert, 49, the trans officer for LGBT+ Scottish Labour until 2021, said she quit Labour for the party’s ‘inaction on transphobia’.

‘I did not expect the pandering to the far-right we have seen,’ she added.

Its publication will mark the start of a new reality for the UK’s trans community, when the full ramifications of April’s ruling finally become clear.

Baroness Kishwer Falkner, the current head of the EHRC, is expected to oversee the rollout of the guidance before handing over her role to Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson at the beginning of December.

Stephenson’s appointment was criticised jointly by Parliament’s women and equalities committee and the joint committee on human rights, who say her experience was not extensive enough in the areas of protected characteristics such as race and disability.

Committee chairs Sarah Owen and David Alton told the equalities minister Bridget Phillipson they could not endorse the move, writing: ‘Our reasons relate to our concerns about vision and leadership, about breadth of expertise across the wide remit of the EHRC, and about rebuilding trust.’

In her response to the Supreme Court ruling in April, Phillipson said the government would ‘will support the rights of women and trans people, now and always’.

She told MPs: ‘This government will offer trans people the dignity that too often they were denied by the party opposite, too often a convenient punch bag, too often the butt of jokes made in this place by the party opposite.’

The Labour Party said it did not comment on polling, but pointed towards Phillipson’s statements when asked to comment.

LGBT+ Labour has also been approached for a comment.

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