Keir Starmer says Labour would end ‘divisive’ Tory culture wars: ‘People are exhausted’
Keir Starmer could become the next prime minister, YouGov polling suggests. (Getty)
Keir Starmer has vowed to put to an end the stoking of culture wars issues such as trans rights if Labour wins the upcoming UK general election.
Starmer told the HuffPost UK he wants to end Rishi Sunak’s “divisive” leadership and instead focus on bringing people together.
“I think people are exhausted by culture wars,” he said. “My clear view is that the vast majority of the public are reasonable, tolerant people.
“Live-and-let-live is a very British thing, and what culture wars do is force people into taking sides that they’re not instinctively inclined to do. It’s exhausting because you’re constantly having a battle about this and a battle about that.
“The Tories have got nowhere else to go but this divisive culture-war area, and if we win the election I want it to be a reset moment for politics in a number of different ways.
“The most important thing to me personally is to restore a sense that we are here to serve the country, but also this sense of bringing people together,” the Labour leader added.
Keir Starmer and Labour have their own problems on trans issues
Polls suggest Starmer, who has led the party since April 2020, will be the next prime minister. But his track record on trans issues isn’t without blemishes.
Although he previously stated his belief that trans women are women, and trans men are men, he and the party have U-turned and shown support for legislation that seems to say the opposite.
He even called legislation that would ban trans women from female hospital wards “common sense.” Maybe more concerning was his comment that a woman is an “adult female” – a dog-whistle phrase typically used by anti-trans groups.
Meanwhile, the Tories have pledged to rewrite the 2010 Equality Act’s definition of sex to mean “biological sex”, making it easier to bar trans people from single-sex spaces, and have continued to focus on the trans debate and culture wars, despite research showing that just one per cent of voters will determine their vote on such issues.
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