The 2024 General Election is over, and Labour are proceeding jubilantly following their predictable landslide triumph. Keir Starmer flung open the doors of No. 10 last week and the hopefuls for front bench positions began to arrive, dressed in their Sunday best. Appointments were swift; many of Starmer’s “favourites” slotted neatly into roles they had already shadowed. He had to go to some effort to appoint the unelected Jacqui Smith — given a peerage in order to return — Minister for Skills, Further and Higher Education. Yet despite this flurry of activity, one role remained conspicuously vacant, that of “Minister for Women and Equalities”. Given the prominence of the “what is a woman?” question throughout the election — and for the years leading up to it — the appointment was always going to draw significant attention. 

Many of us had stayed up until the bitter end of the Election coverage for the exciting moment of watching Liz Truss fall on her face, and in predictably hilarious form, she went AWOL from the stage, stalling for many minutes until she was slow hand-clapped onto it, where much hilarity and significant booing greeted her. 

It was not until Monday that Starmer, also stalling, eventually stumbled towards the feminist spotlight and announced that the much-anticipated “Women and Equalities” role would be shuffled away behind the ministerial curtains of not one, but two women. Women who are critical of gender ideology issued a loud social media slow hand clap to him. None of us laughed. 

The appointment, so important for the future of women’s sex-based rights, was botched, either horribly or deliberately, depending on whether you still have any faith that this prevaricating man will do the right thing for women. 

This crucial appointment — 51 per cent of the population are female after all — was downgraded from a ministerial department role in its own right, to a “BOGOF” for Bridget Phillipson the Secretary of State for Education. The same “2-4-1” deal was also given to Anneliese Dodds, who is now the Minister of State for Development and the “woman thing”, if she can fit it in. Quite who will have time for, or will bother to do, which bit of the “woman thing” remains unclear. Keir Starmer is not a stupid man, even if he is cowardly about women’s rights, so we can assume this was either a careful decision or a supremely arrogant one. 

The more generous opinion might be that Starmer was backed into a corner and had to do something to appease both sides of the “trans” debate. The other train of thought is that this “joint-appointment” is an act intended to punish the women who made things so difficult for him in the run up to the election. The man who said he was listening to those women, no longer has to, and he knows it. He took a really important role for the women critical of him and split it straight down the middle with his Prime Ministerial axe. He then tossed it out to be caught by two women who were already going to have their hands full with their other roles. Keir Starmer not only chose not to appoint a woman who knows what a woman is — the obvious choice being Rosie Duffield — he chose a woman, in Anneliese Dodds, who has made it very explicit that she thinks men can be women. He slapped all our faces. If you can’t feel the sting, I don’t know what drugs you are on, but I’d like some. 

Anneliese Dodds was elected MP for the safe Labour seat of Oxford East in 2017, though her majority fell by 8.2 per cent in 2019 and a further 6.7 per cent in 2024. Despite the fact that she held the Women and Equalities brief whilst in opposition, she’s not exactly flying in her constituency role. Rosie Duffield, by contrast, won the safe Tory seat of Canterbury in 2017 by just 187 votes, yet has built it into a safe Labour one with a majority of 8653; an incredible achievement, studiously ignored by Starmer in his selection of Dodds. 

Dodds was widely ridiculed for her stance on women’s rights whilst in opposition particularly on International Women’s Day in 2022 when Emma Barnett interviewed her for BBC Woman’s Hour. When Barnett asked her for Labour’s definition of a woman Dodds answered:

Well, I have to say there are different legally around what a woman actually is. I mean, you look at the definition within the Equality Act, and I think it just says someone who is adult and female, I think, but then doesn’t see how you define either of those things. I mean, obviously, that’s then you’ve got the biological definition, legal definition…

And when Barnett pushed her hard to return to explaining Labour’s definition she continued:

I think it does depend what the context is surely. I mean surely that is important here. You know, there are people who have decided that they have to make that transition. You know, I’ve spoken with many of them. It’s been a very difficult process for many of those people. And you know, understandably because they live as a woman, you know, they want to be defined as a woman. That’s what the gender recognition act…again a Labour…is brought into place.

It was a deeply uncomfortable interview and makes clear that she, like many of those joining her on the front bench, believes “transwomen are women”. I don’t believe anything has changed; I believe the Labour front bench have just been more cautious about telling the public this openly before the election. 

JK Rowling, hugely critical of the Labour Party prior to the election was not impressed and tweeted the text of the interview following it up by revealing:

And if you happen to be wondering how I have the transcript of that Woman’s Hour to hand, it was sent to me by Dodd’s office after I publicly criticised her prevarication on the programme. They seemed to think I’d find her comments less nonsensical if I saw them in print.

Last night Dodds posted a picture of herself and Phillipson saying:

Delighted to be working with @bphillipsonMP again on our equality agenda. As Minister for Women and Equalities I will deliver our plans to support women and girls, advance race equality, break new ground for LGBT+ rights and stand up for disabled people. Change starts now.

This is a hideously artful declaration, suggesting at first glance, something for everyone; a delightful balance in the delivery of a package of equal rights. It is however deceitfully sparse on what it offers women regarding their sex-based rights. The “support” for women seems to come at the price of “breaking new ground” for “LGBT+”. We know all too well, that the “ground” that will be “broken” is the established sex-based boundaries of women. 

What trans-identified men have demanded for years is the right to access services and sports designated for women. Now Labour will spread our rights at their feet and allow them to stomp over the “ground” established by our feminist ancestors. Women will be “supported” I suspect, by being assisted in accepting this transgression of their rights as stunning and brave. Imagine if the “new ground” to be broken was the one where male macro-aggressions like prostitution, porn, domestic abuse and rape committed against women and girls in huge numbers, were consigned to history. That would indeed be a brave aim as a minister. It would have to start with correctly identifying men and it seems Dodds fails at the first hurdle. 

Prior to the election Starmer offered to meet with J K Rowling, who urged him to make contact with other leading women’s groups first. Dodds, in her shadow cabinet role, met with two women’s rights advocate groups, LGB Alliance and Fair Play For Women, but was bombarded with hefty criticism for doing so by trans activist bullies. It remains to be seen whether she will now meet with women’s groups when Labour is so comfortable in government and safe from the potential effect of their criticism. 

Looking back over the last few weeks of electioneering by Labour can we assume that promises made to women were empty? Probably. Will women spend the next five years begging futilely for the Labour Party Leadership’s ear? Some might. Others will refuse and look for more effective ways to secure our rights or fight to take back those on the brink of being gifted to men. 

Because what is very clear is that despite tremendous and unrelenting effort by a huge variety of women’s rights advocacy groups from across the political spectrum, but mainly on the left, Labour did not listen. I’d contend the majority of the public agree with them, but Labour did not respond to their demands unless prodded by interviewers to make conciliatory noises about “biological sex”. Now I fear they will turn their backs completely. Dodds is a conveniently clueless tool in a role created to champion the rights of women, which will instead be used to deliver their rights to entitled, porn-soaked men. 

Continuing to be kind to and about Labour, in the hope that they will eventually see sense, or that they will even listen to women, no longer looks merely loyal; it looks hopelessly deluded. They’ve shown you what they will do, believe them. 

I have no idea what women should do next, as we face the potential of five long years of deliberate betrayal by Starmer’s front bench on the issue of women’s rights. We could get tougher and fight them harder, but we must at the very least stop giving them the rope to hang us. That rope is made from threads of kindness, hope, fairness and patience, but it has not moved the Labour mountain. 

Women of the left, Labour played us. We need a new game.