JK Rowling accuses Sir Keir Starmer of ‘abandoning’ girls
JK Rowling says she will not vote for Labour in the General Election after accusing Sir Keir Starmer of ‘abandoning’ women.
The Harry Potter author considers herself Left-wing and previously donated £1 million to Labour under Gordon Brown.
But Ms Rowling, 58, says she is now more likely to vote for an independent candidate standing in her constituency.
In an article for The Times, she reeled off quotes from Labour MPs that she feels will have ‘real world consequences of gender ideology’, including the time Sir Keir criticised fellow MP Rosie Duffield, an outspoken women’s rights campaigner, for saying ‘only women have cervix’.
Ms Rowling said: ‘As long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women fighting to retain the rights their foremothers thought were won for all time, I’ll struggle to support them.
JK Rowling says she will not vote for Labour in the General Election after accusing Sir Keir Starmer of ‘abandoning’ women
Sir Keir Starmer has come under fire from the bestselling author for the time he criticised fellow MP Rosie Duffield, an outspoken women’s rights campaigner, for saying ‘only women have cervix’
The women who wouldn’t wheesht [be quiet] didn’t leave Labour. Labour abandoned them.’
In the 2000-word essay, she criticises the Labour leader, as well as shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, shadow equalities secretary Anneliese Dodds, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy and shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry.
The bestselling author has been outspoken in her belief that biological women should be able to have separate spaces, and trans women – should not be allowed access them.
In recent years she has been criticised for her beliefs, which have included that she would rather go to jail than refer to a trans person by their preferred pronouns.
In the essay, she writes how she initially thought she ‘misheard’ Sir Keir in 2021 when he criticised Labour candidate Rosie Duffield for saying only women have a cervix.
It comes as Labour candidate Rosie Duffield has mocked Sir Keir Starmer for backtracking on previous comments about women.
In the essay, she writes how she initially thought she ‘misheard’ Sir Keir in 2021 when he criticised Labour candidate Rosie Duffield (pictured in March) for saying only women have a cervix
K Rowling with Rosie Duffield MP together at lunch
In the 2000-word essay, she criticises the Labour leader, as well as a number of shadow cabinet figures
The party leader said this week that he ‘agreed with Tony Blair’ about men having penises and women having vaginas.
But last year, he said that ‘99.9 per cent of women’ do not have a penis.
Sir Keir had said on Thursday’s Question Time’s leaders’ special that ‘there are some people who don’t identify with the gender that they are born into and they go through a lot of anxiety and distress, and my view in life is to respect and give dignity to everyone, whatever their position’.
Ms Duffield posted on X that she would now filter views through Sir Tony.
‘So, from now on, I shall be submitting my every comment and thought (particularly those mainstream views which most people agree with) to the former Labour prime minister so that it may officially be de-toxified.’
Rowling wrote in her essay in The Times that she felt the Labour leader gave ‘the impression that until Tony Blair sat him down for a chat, he’d never understood how he and his wife had come to produce children’.
Rowling wrote in her essay in The Times that she felt the Labour leader gave ‘the impression that until Tony Blair sat him down for a chat, he’d never understood how he and his wife had come to produce children’
Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy was criticised by JK Rowling
Shadow equalities secretary Anneliese Dodds also came under fire
She claims she wanted to give the Labour leader the ‘benefit of the doubt’ since she has been a Labour vote, a member (no longer), donor (not recently) and campaigner (ditto) all her adult life.
Rowling writes that the debate for ‘left-leaning’ women like herself ‘isn’t, and never has been, about trans people enjoying the rights of every other citizen, and being free to present and identify however they wish’.
Instead, she argues it is ‘about the right of women and girls to assert their boundaries’.
She writes: ‘It’s about freedom of speech and observable truth.
‘It’s about waiting, with dwindling hope, for the left to wake up to the fact that its lazy embrace of a quasi-religious ideology is having calamitous consequences.’
She concludes: ‘As long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women fighting to retain the rights their foremothers thought were won for all time, I’ll struggle to support them.’
Earlier on Friday, Sir Keir ruled out lifting the block on the Scottish government’s controversial gender reforms which Scottish Labour had voted through the Scottish Parliament along with the SNP and Greens.
