On Monday the 3rd February 2020, Sir Keir Starmer took part in a well-known political rite of passage for aspirant leaders, movers and shakers: the Mumsnet Webchat. He answered a selection of questions posed by Mumsnet (‘MN’) users, and one posed by a member of MNHQ. I’m not clear if he self-selected the questions he chose to answer or if Mumsnet HQ provided filtering assistance - but his lack of engagement with what MNHQ has come to call the ‘gender/self-ID topic’ and the rapid deletion of further questions and comments around women’s rights were noticeable.

Mumsnet is a massive website, used primarily by (millions of) women, particularly from the UK. Any British politician who doesn’t engage comprehensively with questions about women and children during a MN Webchat is pretty much pissing about on the sidelines of debate before scoring an own goal. It happened to Penny Mordaunt and now it’s happened to Keir Starmer. This is especially noteworthy given that before the webchat, Keir Starmer was very much a favourite with many of the left-leaning MN members.

I want to focus on one part of one question in this short blog piece, which concerns the fate of the promised inquiry, announced by Penny Mordaunt when she was the Minister for Women and Equalities, in 2018 into the 4000% rise in children, mostly girls, wishing to ‘transition’. Children’s safeguarding matters a great deal to me, having been Portsmouth City Council’s lead member for education and children’s services for many years, including during the period of Ed Balls’s response to the tragedy of Victoria Climbie’s death. Children’s safeguarding was finally placed, by the Labour Party, front and centre of everybody’s responsibilities. We were all ‘the corporate parent’ and we all trained to focus directly on the children, on the issues, on the problems and on the solutions, no matter how high or how lowly our roles, irrespective of organisational ‘clout’, with no fudge and no excuses. This applied as much to Sir Keir Starmer as it applied to me.

What on earth has changed that Keir Starmer, today, felt it acceptable to read a question about children’s safeguarding during a campaign to be the next Labour leader and effectively decline to answer it? Here’s the exchange:

Rogdmum:

Hi Keir

My 14 year old daughter recently announced that she identifies as a boy. She falls under the loose description of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) where adolescents who did not show any signs of gender identity issues as children, develop gender confusion as adolescents. Many of these adolescents are autistic or have suffered from trauma or have serious mental health issues.

Referrals to the Tavistock clinic have skyrocketed from around 100 a decade ago to 2600 last year. The Government agreed to carry out an investigation into the sudden rise, but it appears to have vanished into some hole somewhere.

What will you do to raise awareness of this issue and ensure a proper investigation is carried out?

KeirStarmerMP:

‘Thanks rogdmum for this question and for sharing your family's experience. I'm acutely aware of the anxiety and distress that this causes to individuals and families. This has to be seen as a human rights issue and we need to ensure that this debate is conducted respectfully and calmly, and with the best interests of children at heart.’ [Answer ends.]

And there’s me thinking that Keir Starmer wasn’t afraid to tackle significant issues head on. Unpicking his answer, especially after reading his robust and comprehensive replies on other subjects, was not an especially happy hour for me as a left-of-centre politically-engaged woman who keenly wants to see an effective opposition.

First, the user who engaged with him, rogdmum, was engaging with the subject matter and with him in a respectful and calm manner. So why cut her off like this? Why appear so patronising? Rogdmum and her child’s lived realities are not some kind of philosophical proposition to be reserved for a future debating tournament - it’s in the here and now, and time is running out for pre-pubescent, pubescent, and adolescent children whose confused thoughts and feelings are being rapidly and radically medicalised through surgical and chemical interventions, many of which are experimental on children and irreversible - and god knows there’ve been enough whistle-blowers coming forward to ensure that this situation is not a secret. It’s in plain sight.

Second, this: ‘Referrals to the Tavistock clinic have skyrocketed from around 100 a decade ago to 2600 last year. The Government agreed to carry out an investigation into the sudden rise, but it appears to have vanished into some hole somewhere. What will you do to raise awareness of this issue and ensure a proper investigation is carried out?’ [My emphasis}

Keir Starmer didn’t answer. He didn’t answer. And neither he nor Mordaunt nor any politician can be sure, certain sure, that what’s going on with ‘transitioning’ children is safe. Where’s the inquiry? Where’s the science?

When the children’s safeguarding scandal that is brewing finally bursts out of its barrel and starts sticking to a whole load of people, and when the harms that are being perpetrated in the name of gender politics are firmly attributed to politicians and their shadowy advisers, I do not want to hear from Penny Mordaunt and Keir Starmer that they didn’t know. They did know, and they do know, and I can only surmise from their inaction that even after scandal after scandal after scandal, they’re being blocked from standing up for children’s safeguarding. Time for some honesty and courage, I think.

Acknowledgements and thanks

Thank you to the users of Mumsnet who contribute valuable content, for free, every hour of every day. Thank you to rogdmum for permission to discuss her question.

Photo credit: News Shopper webite - https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/national/18207389.starmer-will-take-man-without-principle-johnson/

Webchat credit: Mumsnet - https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_live_events/3810484-Webchat-with-Labour-leadership-contender-Sir-Keir-Starmer-MP-on-Monday-February-3-at-1-30pm?pg=7