A LABOUR frontbencher hit out at the BBC for focusing on “identity issues” as the party’s row over trans rights continued.
Shadow justice secretary David Lammy accused Today presenter Nick Robinson of raising an issue “that most British people aren’t talking about”.
His comments came after Labour MP Rosie Duffield accused colleagues of “chucking me on the railway tracks” over her stance on people being allowed to self-identify as female.
In a sign of the irritation in Labour about the row, which has continued throughout the party’s conference, Lammy told the BBC: “You could be asking about climate change, you could be asking about mental health, you could be asking about education, you could be asking about health.
“You deliberately are asking me about an issue that you know does not come up on the doorstep.”
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In a Radio 4 Today interview ahead of Sir Keir Starmer’s crunch conference speech, Lammy told Robinson: “You, the BBC, are choosing to land on this subject – that most British people aren’t talking about in a fuel crisis – and spend minutes on this because it keeps Labour talking about identity issues and not about the substantive policies that Keir will set out.”
Canterbury MP Duffield has stayed away from the conference, saying she has suffered abuse after being labelled a “transphobe”, but spoke at an unofficial fringe event last night.
“It’s ridiculous and nothing about me is a dinosaur. I’m angry at colleagues chucking me on the railway tracks,” she said, according to The Times.
“I’m even more determined. I’m not a transphobe, I never have been and I never will be. I simply want to use the word ‘women’.”
The reference to “dinosaur” appeared to be aimed at comments made during conference by Lammy.
The shadow justice secretary told Times Radio: “I don’t recall ever calling my friend Rosie Duffield a dinosaur.”
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He said he had been talking about the progress made in human rights for groups during the 20th century and the need for those rights to be extended to trans people.
“What I said was that the great story of the 20th century is extending rights to a lot of people who didn’t have them at the beginning of that century. Working people had no rights, black and brown people had very few rights and women had very few rights and certainly you couldn’t love who you wanted to love if you were gay in the 20th Century.
“By the end of it, we had those rights and the minority group of people who are trans, we have got to extend rights to them as well.
“That is what I said, and to be honest you can only take offence if you are anti-trans and I talked about dinosaurs across all of those groups who hoard rights and don’t want to share them.”
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