JK Rowling has criticised Sir Keir Starmer for appointing Labour grandee Baroness Harriet Harman as an adviser on women and girls.
The outspoken novelist pointed to Harman’s comments supporting trans rights, counting trans women as women.
Following a drubbing at the local elections, Starmer has turned to several old figures in an attempt to get his premiership back on track.
These included Harman, a former Labour deputy leader and Britain’s longest serving female MP from 1982 to 2024, and former PM Gordon Brown.
However, Rowling blasted the PM’s latest move as reinforcing the belief that the Labour Party is for ‘smug, lanyard-wearing, luxury-belief-espousing cultural elitists’.
Harman has previously spoken up in defence of trans people.
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She said in 2022: ‘As far as I’m concerned, women are women who are born women, but women are also women who are trans women.’
Rowling, a former Labour supporter, wrote on X: ‘Bravo, Keir Starmer, for getting in an Adviser on Women and Girls who thinks the definition of women and girls includes men and boys.’
She later added: ‘Once somebody’s proven they’re too frightened of being called ‘bigot’ to defend the most vulnerable, they’ve shown who they are.’
The author also dismissed any prospect of her returning to support Labour.
In another post, she wrote: ‘Polite notice to those urging me to show blind tribal allegiance to a party that’s screwed over female nurses who want to change in a female-only space, female prisoners housed with male sex offenders and female rape survivors who want an all-female support service: nope.’
It comes as the PM faces an uphill battle to hold onto his position, as several Labour MPs have called on him to go.
Labour faced losses both in English councils and defeat for the first time in Wales in Thursday’s set of elections.
Last night, Catherine West, who represents Hornsey and Friern Barnet, said she would trigger a leadership contest if cabinet members failed to move against Starmer by Monday.
She told BBC Radio 4 her preferred option would be for the cabinet to select a new leader, but said she would throw her hat in the ring and seek the 80 names required to force a contest.
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