Higher Manchester Mayor has confronted a backlash after his feedback backing transgender girls being allowed to make use of feminine bathrooms.
Andy Burnham may exchange Sir Keir Starmer if he wins the Makerfield by-election (Picture: Getty)
Labour management hopeful Andy Burnham has “severe inquiries to reply” over his views on single-sex areas, MPs have warned. The Higher Manchester Mayor has confronted a backlash after his feedback backing transgender girls being allowed to make use of feminine bathrooms.
He additionally dismissed the concept that single-sex areas ought to be protected for organic girls as “fairly a small minority view” throughout a 2022 assembly. Mr Burnham is within the working to exchange Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister if he wins a crunch by-election in Makerfield subsequent month. MPs and campaigners have questioned how Britain may find yourself with one other prime minister who doesn’t “rise up for ladies.”
It comes after incumbent Sir Keir was cricitised for saying in 2023 that “99.9% of girls have not obtained a penis.”
Reform UK’s equality spokeswoman Suella Braverman stated: “Bandwagon Burnham has severe inquiries to reply. How can the ladies of Makerfield vote for a person who nonetheless can’t say what a girl is?
“These feedback present he isn’t on the facet of girls, however on the facet of a radical trans foyer and out-of-touch ideology. Merely saying you’re a lady doesn’t make it true.
“Even in gentle of the Supreme Court docket judgment, Burnham refuses to face up for ladies. This insanity has gone on for much too lengthy, and it’ll solely finish with a Reform UK authorities.”
Mr Burnham stated that organic males who determine as feminine ought to be allowed to make use of girls’s bathrooms.
Learn extra: Keir Starmer skewered inside minutes of PMQs beginning as Badenoch mocks U-turn
Get the most recent politics information – straight from our staff in Westminster and extra Subscribe Invalid e-mail
We use your sign-up to offer content material in methods you have consented to and to enhance our understanding of you. This will embody adverts from us and third events based mostly on our understanding. You possibly can unsubscribe at any time. Learn our Privateness Coverage
He was requested at a 2022 assembly with Manchester’s “youth mixed authority” whether or not males who self-identify as girls ought to be allowed to make use of girls’s bathrooms.
He replied: “Clearly, there’s a group of people that do really feel that bathrooms ought to be a protected house just for girls and there shouldn’t be anybody biologically a male allowed in that house.
“I do not suppose that is a majority view. I believe it is a minority view and fairly a small minority view, truly. However it’s a view, so you may’t utterly ignore it. Probably, they is perhaps girls who’ve skilled male violence in some unspecified time in the future of their life. I do not know, that is a method of taking a look at it.”
He added: “The concept that individuals are falsely portraying their gender another way simply because they wish to abuse a girls’s house or encroach on girls’s security … possibly it occurs, however you might be speaking a tiny, tiny, tiny variety of folks.
“So why are we permitting everybody to get into this actually polarised and terribly hateful debate about these points? I’m going to make it actually plain: I assist trans rights, and I would like that to be identified.”
Mr Burnham was contacted for a response to these feedback.
The row threatens to revive Labour’s “lady downside”, which dogged Sir Keir for years when he did not outline a girl.
Unbiased MP Rosie Duffield, who left Labour after feeling “hounded” over her views on gender, stated: “I hope Andy reveals an curiosity in partaking with girls’s rights teams and former Labour Social gathering members who’ve left over this difficulty and the best way they had been hounded, expelled or discriminated in opposition to due to their mainstream view on points corresponding to defending girls’s single-sex areas or upholding the Equality Act as clarified by the Supreme Court docket in 2025.
“I’m a type of girls handled appallingly by the Labour Social gathering and would want to see management and significant change on girls’s rights earlier than I thought of rejoining the celebration I used to like and consider in.”
In 2025, the Supreme Court docket dominated {that a} lady is outlined by organic intercourse underneath equalities regulation.
Mr Burnham stated in an unearthed clip that he didn’t wish to see “tradition wars” between trans activists and “folks supposedly advocating for ladies’s rights”.
Journalist Jo Bartosch, a girls’s rights campaigner, stated: “Can a girl have a penis? That’s the ridiculous query Andy Burnham must get used to answering if he’s severe about changing into prime minister. But the supposedly no-nonsense Northern politician has spent years wriggling round it.”
She added: “However the wannabe PM ought to ask himself this: practically a century after equal suffrage was gained, why ought to any self-respecting lady vote for a person who doesn’t respect her rights?”
Philanthropist Duncan Bannatyne, who appeared on the BBC’s Dragon’s Den, withdrew his assist for Mr Burnham after his feedback emerged.
In a put up on X on Wednesday, he stated: “Final week, I made a decision to throw my assist behind Andy Burnham for management of the Labour Social gathering and on to PM.
“However I can’t try this now that I discover out he says trans girls, i.e. males, ought to be allowed to make use of the women’ bathrooms. I can by no means assist anybody that does this. Organic girls should have single intercourse areas.”
Downing Avenue tried to distance Sir Keir from Mr Burnham by saying the by-election candidate “could communicate as himself”.
When requested if the Prime Minister’s “100%” backing of the Mayor meant he supported Mr Burnham’s coverage positions, the Prime Minister’s press spokeswoman stated Sir Keir “speaks for the Authorities”.
Requested whether or not there could be a scenario through which Sir Keir disagreed with a Labour candidate who has his backing, the spokeswoman stated: “I am not going to get into hypotheticals.”
Andy Burnham launches Makerfield by-election marketing campaign
It comes as a ballot launched on Wednesday instructed Mr Burnham may lead Labour to victory in opposition to Reform in a basic election.
The survey, carried out by Extra in Widespread, discovered that Labour would get an eight-point enhance with Mr Burnham at its helm if he succeeded in his try and develop into the subsequent celebration chief.
As Labour chief, Mr Burnham would win again a 3rd of voters who’ve left the celebration because the 2024 Common Election, in keeping with the survey of two,599 folks.
The “Burnham bounce” would safe Labour 30% of votes, three proportion factors forward of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which has persistently led the opinion polls because the autumn of 2025.
Luke Tryl, the Extra in Widespread UK director, stated: “This is likely one of the most high-stakes by-elections in historical past, and the longer term trajectory of the Labour Social gathering, and certainly British politics extra broadly, could rely on what occurs within the subsequent month.
“Thus far, it appears to be like like Andy Burnham’s attraction extends past Higher Manchester.
“In a hypothetical basic election, he may give Labour a lead over Reform – successful again progressive voters who’ve drifted away, but in addition making positive factors with a few of these the celebration has misplaced to Reform.
“That stated, folks recognise the mayoralty and premiership are completely different roles, and a big a part of Burnham’s attraction rests on championing the North and combating Westminster.
“If he’s profitable in Makerfield, it could possibly be difficult to maintain his popularity as an outsider from throughout the Home of Commons, particularly throughout this period of anti-politics.”
The Makerfield by-election, which will likely be held on June 18, was triggered by Josh Simons’ resignation. The previous minister was elected in 2024 on a majority of 5,399 votes, however Reform gained each ward within the constituency ultimately month’s native elections and got here second in 2024’s Common Election.
Leave a Reply