Labour's LGBT group sparks outrage after nominating trans woman for female officer role: 'It's mad!'

Trans activists nominated Steph Richards, a trans woman, to be the women's officer for the Labour Party's LGBT+ group.

The controversial move, backed by the Trans Rights Alliance, has received strong criticism from gender critical Labour members, who say it "breaches party rules" and defies the Supreme Court ruling defining woman as biological sex.

Weighing in on Richards's nomination, former Labour Adviser Matthew Torbitt said it is "inappropriate" to nominate a transgender woman for the role over a biological woman.

Torbitt said: "I would say it's probably inappropriate, because if you are trans, you can probably talk about the issues trans women may face.

"But I think if you're going for a women's officer role, you've got to be a woman from birth, therefore you can talk more broadly about issues women face."

Criticising Torbitt's "polite" take on the issue, commentator Alex Armstrong hit out at the nomination of Richards: "I think that it is 100 per cent the case that a man can't ever understand women's issues.

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"It's just a matter of fact, we just can't, that's how it is. If I were to magically become a woman tomorrow, I don't think I'd know what it means to be a woman."

Offering his verdict, commentator Steve N. Allen stated: "If there was a trans officer and they put someone in who wasn't trans, I'm sure they complain. So the logic stands, and they'd agree with the logic half the time."

Echoing Allen's thoughts, Torbitt then explained: "There are facts, right, so gender is a social construct, sex isn't, it's biological. I think the same could be said of race and ethnicity.

"And I can only imagine the backlash if a white person was elected as LGBT+ Labour's or any other groups's race officer, for instance, and it was a white person, not somebody that wasn't white.

"And I think that's where we have to maybe look at the facts on this sort of stuff, at the risk of upsetting and actually just representing people."

Armstrong jibed: "Of course, the reality is that the whole alphabet spaghetti of the LGBTQ+ is too broad."

Host Patrick Christys then concluded: "Isn't it just mad that we're having this conversation? It just seems like maybe a slightly backward step, given that we've had some rulings that this stuff shouldn't really be happening anymore."

A Trans Rights Alliance spokesman said: "We’re a cross-factional group of trans and ally voices united by our wish to see LGBT+ Labour central to fighting for our rights in the Labour Party."