Andy Burnham said that men who identify as women should be able to use female toilets and only a “small minority” of people trying to start a “culture war” object, in comments from 2022 unearthed by the Daily Mail. Here’s an excerpt.
Andy Burnham faced a backlash last night over his views on single-sex spaces.
Biological males who identify as female should be allowed to use women’s toilets, the Labour leadership hopeful told a meeting, in comments unearthed by the Daily Mail.
And the Greater Manchester Mayor said the idea that single-sex spaces should be protected for biological women was a “minority view”, angering campaigners who took the issue to the UK’s highest court – and won.
Burnham dismissed those activists as “supposed feminists” trying to start “culture wars” by demanding protection for such environments.
The row threatens to revive Labour’s ‘woman problem’, which dogged Sir Keir Starmer and other leading figures for years as they struggled to even define what a woman is.
Tory Equalities Spokesman Claire Coutinho said Burnham was “shockingly out of touch”.
She told the Mail: “Protecting the safety, dignity and privacy of women is not a minority view – it’s the law. It is a gross injustice that women have been raped in prison, lost their spots on sports podiums, or lost their jobs for stating biological sex is real.
“But that has happened because people like Andy did not think women’s rights were worth fighting for – it is shockingly out of touch.”
The revelation could also lead to questions on the doorstep in Makerfield, where Burnham is seeking to win a by-election next month as a stepping stone to challenging Sir Keir for the keys to No. 10.
One Whitehall source said: “I think Andy may find that the idea that men should stay out of the women’s toilets is not a minority view in Makerfield.”
Burnham’s comments came at a 2022 meeting with Manchester’s ‘youth combined authority’, leaked footage of which has been obtained by the Mail.
He was asked whether men who self-identify as women should be allowed to use women’s toilets.
He replied: “Clearly there is a group of people who do feel that toilets should be a safe space only for women and there should not be anyone biologically a male allowed in that space.
“I don’t think that’s a majority view. I think it’s a minority view and quite a small minority view, actually. But it is a view so you can’t completely ignore it. Possibly they might be women who have experienced male violence at some point in their life. I don’t know, that’s one way of looking at it.”
He added: “The idea that people are falsely portraying their gender in a different way just because they want to abuse a women’s space or encroach on women’s safety… maybe it happens but you are talking a tiny, tiny, tiny number of people.
“So why are we allowing everyone to get into this really polarised and terribly hateful debate about these issues?
“I am going to make it really plain: I support trans rights and I want that to be known.”
The comments are the clearest statement of his views on the issue. However, they do not appear to have changed significantly in the intervening period.
Last year he was critical of interim guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission following a landmark Supreme Court ruling which found that single-sex spaces should be reserved for people of that biological sex.
At the time, he said the guidance would make the issue “more confusing in the real world”.
At the 2022 meeting, he suggested that even raising the issue was an attempt to start a “culture war”. A source present said the individual asking the question was reprimanded by officials for bringing up the matter.
Worth reading in full.
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80% didn’t vote Labour.
So only a small minority wanted a Labour Government …. and half of them have already changed their mind.
Hes a prime exemplar of luxury beliefs. Go down well in Makerfield where a spade is not a fork.
Out of the frying pan into the fire
Can someone please carry out a survey. I do not know anyone who thinks it is OK.
I would say from this photograph that he is wearing a sheepish grin. Perhaps it is because he is embarrassed leading this peculiar crowd (have a look at the woman with the purple hair) but feels he cannot refuse. If he really wanted to show his supportive credentials of males who identify as female then he should have appeared wearing a dress. That gesture really would sort out the men from the boys – figuratively speaking.
Burnham has man boobs
Many events and indeed people have been cancelled over the offence felt by one person, so why he feels he can reset that standard to it being acceptable if it offends a small minority is a bit assumptive. Does he have any idea of how big or small the group of objectors are, I wonder.?
I wonder if there is anything on film of him blocking holding an inquiry into the paki rape gangs in Manchester.
What in past times before this nonsense became, well, nonsense, did “men who identify as women” do when it came to using lavatories or other facilities, I wonder?
Why was it never a burning issue until the last decade or so?
It is a major part of the Globalist’s ‘Smash Society’ aka ‘Civilization Extinction’ policy. In the US these attacks on Society are refered to as a ‘Line of Effort’ or a ‘Line of Attack’. The main aim is to demoralise society. Or to re-word that to … de moralise society …. eliminate any kind of morality (which includes Christianity) so that ‘drag shows for children’…. ‘porn for children’ … abortion up to just before birth … euthanasia for anyone from the moment just after birth etc. become normal.
See here … the evil EU announcng its full support for pride month …
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news-corner/brussels-pride-week-von-der-leyen-ideology-ecj-hungary/
What has that got to do with the EU? It is its top priorty policy of ‘Smash Sociey’.
Why should any male feel entitled to pass judgement on whether privacy should be afforded to females and more rarely vice versa? Overreach doesn’t begin to cover it.
Indeed. They don’t get to give consent on our behalf.
To be fair, looking at his T-shirt in that picture, he might be more in touch with his feminine side that we thought.
Not a good look is it?
But some demonstrably feel entitled to pass judgment on us in other areas, do they not? There are men who would strip us of our civil liberties including our fundamental right to vote and rescind our basic human right to bodily autonomy, and are generally very outspoken in how they think women should be living their lives which meets with their approval, for example.
This is just another thing to add to the existing list. And as for your ‘vice versa’: when are men ever inconvenienced, made to feel unsafe and put at risk or have their sex-based rights threatened or trampled on, in comparison?
Women adopting a male persona, usually generation Z, are quite common now, particularly in education, catering and retail. No idea how they get on with urinals if they’re still in tact, or if men object to their presence. Fundamentalists paradoxically do not appear to support transgender ideology, just misogyny.
Men will never be at personal risk or have their rights threatened from FtM trans-identified people, no matter the context: sports, toilets, prisons, care settings etc;
”An NHS trust deliberately obstructed a police investigation into the rape of a transgender patient on an all-male secure psychiatric ward.
Male patients chanted “no Adam’s apple” when the 5ft 3in biological female arrived on the ward and within an hour the victim was raped in a cupboard.
MPs, academics and campaigners have called for an inquiry into how the hospital admitted a vulnerable biological woman onto a ward made up entirely of men sectioned under the Mental Health Act, and its “abhorrent” actions after the rape.
Inner London crown court heard that Thomas followed the victim into a side room. The victim was then pushed into a cupboard and raped shortly after arriving at Lambeth Hospital, south London, on April 12, 2022. The victim, who has female genitalia, had been transferred from a different hospital to the wing, named Eden Ward.”
https://archive.ph/rh9kF
https://x.com/KateBMwriting/status/2008096432771768355
The small minority being 99% of women (ie not the deluded ones) and 98% of men (the 2% being ultra-socialists like this twat and the chicks with dicks). Yep, modern democracy in number form.
Another wacky nasty “lefty” (nothing to do with left).
Keep going… Sooner to their end the better.
The egg timer falls quicker near the end.
We’re at that point.
Not long now.
Another good day for Reform UK – keep it up!
Did someone already tell Burnham that the whole Labour party is a small minority, like any other politically active group alway is? But that a majority of people are not actively opposing Burnham’s political ideas doesn’t mean they agree with them. Otherwise, Labour would get a lot more votes.
And then the Boy Wonder candidate turned out to be rubbish too. And nobody was surprised.
Labour has the same problem as all the mock-conservative govermments before them: They’re tied into a straightjacket of political objectives not chosen by them and just supposed to supply The Magic Face™ which will cause stupid voters to accept them. The people who made these choice are way to arrogant to believe that said stupid voters could even have a mind of their own. A crescendo of Democracy must be abolished to save it! will set in once they can no longer avoid realising this. In Germany, that’s already happening.
Boy Blunder.
He is not the messiah, he is a naughty boy.
Kudos to the DM for unearthing and exposing these comments. Anything that holes the MV Burnham is to be welcomed.
Hopefully the voters of Makerfield will indeed show him that keeping men out of womens’ toilets is, in fact, a majority viewpoint.
Tory Equalities Spokesman Claire Coutinho said Burnham was “shockingly out of touch”.
She told the Mail: “Protecting the safety, dignity and privacy of women is not a minority view – it’s the law. It is a gross injustice that women have been raped in prison, lost their spots on sports podiums, or lost their jobs for stating biological sex is real.
“But that has happened because people like Andy did not think women’s rights were worth fighting for – it is shockingly out of touch.”
What hypocrisy – the culture wars ran amok under 14 years of the fake Tories.
The small minority trying to start a culture war is you and your mates, Burnham. They always accuse you of exactly what they are guilty of.
This is more a truism: Burnham correctly observed that a majority of people aren’t politically active in any way. That’s how things always are because the majority usually has other things to do outside of elections. But that only a small minority of people are actively campaigning for women’s rights doesn’t mean the majority believes Burnham is right instead.
Yes, good point
That is very true, but pretty much about most things that are imposed on us. They conflate not caring enough – or just having too much to be getting on with already – to actively do something about it and fight it with tacit approval.
Not the same thing at all.