‘Cooper’s focus on vandalism rather than trans people sums up Labour cowardice’

Earlier this month, members of the public in a country where LGBTQ+ and particularly trans rights were already under threat took to the streets after a decision that struck a significant blow for queer rights in the region.

What transpired in the days-long protests that took place in the heart of the country’s capital following the announcement of that decision was awe-inspiring yet understandable, especially considering the significance of the blow to freedom and self-expression. Of course, the protests in Budapest set a precedent for how any nation’s citizens should respond to anti-LGBTQ+ attacks.

It is now almost a month later. Hungarians continue to call out their much-reviled prime minister Viktor Orban’s much-reviled rhetoric and he continues to ignore the hundreds of thousands of voices crying out against his ban on Pride marches.

Meanwhile, in the UK, a similar wave of vitriol against a widely-reviled decision – this time judicial – has prompted a response by tens of thousands of people who have voiced their backlash in the heart of the country’s capital.

As in Hungary, the UK public is continuing to call out its government’s rhetoric, and, like in Hungary, the government has ignored the hundreds of thousands of voices crying out for support.

It’s estimated that over 20,000 people attended Trans Liberation’s emergency demonstration in London over the weekend. That’s nothing to sniff at. In just a few short days, Trans Liberation, alongside various other groups, managed to metaphorically fill the O2 Arena in London with a few impromptu social media posts and calls to action.

Yet, remarkably, the Labour government’s response to this unprecedented and remarkable convergence of solidarity towards the trans community wasn’t to address it directly, but to complain about spots of graffiti tagged along the parade route.

According to the Met Police, various statues of Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, South African prime minister Jan Smuts, and Suffragette Millicent Fawcett were tagged with slogans of trans solidarity and resistance in the face of attempts to curtail our rights.

Home secretary Yvette Cooper’s statement was among the only government statements on the trans rights protest and it focused primarily on these spots of graffiti, which she branded “disgraceful.”

Now, I’m not here to argue about the laws of graffiti tagging in urban areas. The law is the law, and it’s not my fight whether graffiti tags should warrant a criminal offence. It is, however, a tad offensive and deeply tiring that the government’s first and, as of right now, only major response to the trans rights protest was about acts of vandalism so benign the tags were gone before most of the right-wing media could churn out their outrage articles.

Cooper has single-handedly taken one of the biggest protests it has seen this year alone and reduced it to a soundbite about petty crime for the right-wing press to lap up.

Unless the government addresses the implications of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling head-on, Cooper’s statement reeks of deflection on an issue that Labour knows it is faltering on. Whether deliberate or not, it’s cowardly – and callous.

Right now, Keir Starmer’s government is no better suited to addressing the issues and demands of the LGBTQ+ community than a Hungarian regime which boils complex issues down to bigoted buzzwords and redundant arguments over “common sense.” It is no better at approaching LGBTQ+ rights, which it claims to champion, than Orban and his deeply hateful rhetoric.

The audacity of ignoring the trans community’s voice is only further compounded by the fact that UK governments – both Conservative and now Labour – have spent years throwing trans people under the bus amid culture wars over single-sex spaces, sports and healthcare, as a scapegoat for its wider failings.

The Home Secretary’s attempt to focus on petty crime rather the real-world implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling for trans people is insulting – and Keir Starmer’s government only looks more and more cowardly while it remains silent on the actual issues impacting LGBTQ+ people today.