Labour's Shadow Health Sec said WHAT?

The Cass Report continues to be a source of horror for trans people and for families with trans children.

It may not surprise you that

Tory Health Secretary Victoria Atkins has told MPs she has a “clear intention” to introduce a “banning order” on puberty blockers.

What might be slightly more surprising is that Labour’s official response is … “Good job!”

Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said he “welcomed” Ms Atkins’ approach to puberty blockers, which suppress the natural production of sex hormones to delay puberty.

Atkins called this an “extraordinary” but nonetheless justified move, and, well, she’s a fucking Tory and the entire Cass Review was structured for the purpose of attacking trans people justifying restrictions in care. But this response from Labour is more than disappointing, even if Streeting had previously telegraphed his support for anti-trans scapegoating and attacks by his positive statements about the Cass Review, which has come under fire not just from people like me or well-researched people like Erin Reed of Erin in the Morning, but also from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the Endocrine Society, and personally by Ben Hoffman, the president of the American Academy of Pediactics (AAP).

If you’re from the USA you might not fully understand the significance of Streeter and his statement in this context. You may not even know what a “Shadow” minister or secretary is, and that’s crucial, so let’s start there: Imagine that the party who doesn’t hold the presidency, let’s use our current situation with Biden as POTUS and the Republicans having little power to stop a cabinet nomination, created an unofficial cabinet, where they designated one high-ranking Republican as “Fake Secretary of State” one person as “Fake SecDef” etc. The fake version of each cabinet position becomes the go-to person for critiquing the actions of Biden’s actual cabinet officers.

This is the basic premise of a “Shadow Cabinet,” and so in a Tory administration, Labour will designate certain specific individuals as point on certain specific issues or sectors by designated them, for instance, the “Shadow Health Secretary¹.”

It’s that fake Health secretary I want to talk about. Just this past week the Tory HealthSec came out for banning most medical care for trans youth. The Labour Shadow HealthSec is supposed to be the point person for criticizing the Tory position and distinguishing Labour. Instead the Labour Shadow HealthSec endorsed the official HS’s position that would introduce a law making much trans medical care illegal.

Think about that.

I’m not saying that Labour are the same as the Tories any more than Democrats are the same as Republicans. But holy shit! This is an attention-getting issue on which Labour could stand for a revitalized NHS that better serves the needs of its patients. Instead they’re standing for a law mandating NHS provide fewer and worse services to a particularly vulnerable population.

Whatever you think of the morality of such a law (and I would expect most of you to be with me on it being horrible or you know where the door is), the pure politics of the LSHS coming out in favour of the HS’s administrative action and proposed follow-up bill in this environment with an election imminent shows how horribly incompetent Labour really is.

And, of course, this isn’t the first time Labour has been fuckfaces to the queer community — not even just recently. Only weeks ago another Labour minister was called out for saying that it was bad to say that queer relationships were equal to straight ones, and that he wouldn’t want his children taught such equality in schools.

His grand hair-splitting defense was that gay PEOPLE are equal to straight people and deserve respect, but gay RELATIONSHIPS aren’t the same as straight relationships because queers don’t get pregnant by accident, and “same” is a synonym for “equal,” and this was all he was really saying so please don’t call him a bigot, please.

But of course that’s not all the bigot was really saying.

The Tories are bad. The Tories are worse than Labour. But holy fucking shit Labour is so bad if these are people they are willing to consider leaders. Even if they can convince queers and trans people that the harm they’re going to do to QT communities and individuals is less than what the Tories will do, the UK has a parliamentary system, which means that there are other parties queers can vote for and even among those who think Labour is the best among bad options, the party is still creating an enthusiasm gap likely to depress enthusiasm and thus turnout among their would-be supporters.

I don’t follow UK politics enough to know what will happen in the upcoming election, but I’ve seen enough to know why a completely shit party has been allowed to run the place for the last decade+. And I know that I would sure as hell be the opposite of excited to vote for these fuckbrains.

1. British press do not generally capitalize these shadow titles, but I’ll do that here to emphasize that the positions do carry significant official weight as a mouthpiece for a particular party, if not for the government.