The Lib Dems’ pratfalls on trans are an insult to women
In Bournemouth, women were silenced and an award for outstanding female politicians was handed to a man.
Like dog owners who come to resemble their pets, the Liberal Democrats are starting to look uncannily like their leader: a man whose most notable contribution to public life has been pratfalls, from tumbling off paddleboards to shrieking on rollercoasters. Its Bournemouth conference, which began last week, opened with the gagging of a debate on the definition of ‘woman’. It closed with the Patsy Calton Award – created in memory of a female MP who died of breast cancer to honour exceptional women – being handed to a man.
The winner, Manchester councillor Chris Northwood, first declared himself ‘trans’ in 2021, apparently inspired by actor Ellen / Elliot Page’s transition. Incredibly, a video played at the conference listed one of his achievements as standing up for ‘women’s safety’. After receiving the prize, Northwood posted on X: ‘I see people are upset that I won an award for women because I’m the wrong type of woman.’ Of course, the reason people are angry is not that he is the ‘wrong type of woman’ – it’s that he is not a woman at all.
The Lib Dems have only doubled down since. The Lib Dems’ official social-media account said awarding the prize to Northwood proved how much they ‘honour and value all of our women members’. Not to be out-gushed, Liberal Democrat Women declared that ‘she is an inspiration to many within the party with her dedication to the party and her constituents’ (sic).
But not everyone within the party was so enthusiastic. Liberal Voice for Women (LV4W), the party’s gender-critical faction, excoriated the party’s leadership. The group told the Express: ‘What message does the party think this sends to women members and voters? The message seems to be that women are not valued.’
Just how undervalued was made clear on the first day of the conference. LV4W chair, Zoe Hollowood, urged delegates to back a straightforward motion: that ‘woman’ in quota rules means an adult human female. ‘We must stop telling people it’s unsafe to hear views they disagree with – that excuse opens the door to censorship, violence and tyranny’, she said. Her appeal, according to reports, was met with groans in the audience.
Among the audience members was Lucas North, the ‘they/them’ treasurer of LGBT+ Liberal Democrats. He proceeded to dismiss the LV4W motion as a ‘sham’ and demanded members ‘reject the idea that trans identities are up for debate’. Unsurprisingly, Lib Dem MPs slunk out of the room before the vote, apparently because they had another meeting to attend. Hollowood’s final plea to ‘vote against this suppression’ was met with jeers when she dared to mention the arrest of comedy writer Graham Linehan.
We shouldn’t be surprised by the fevered, dogmatic opposition faced by Hollowood and LV4W. After all, blind obedience to trans dogma is one of the Lib Dems’ few consistent policies. In 2019, Baroness Lynne Featherstone announced that feminists who opposed men in women’s spaces were ‘not welcome’ at that year’s conference. In 2023, gender-critical women raising concerns about the dangers of medicalising confused children were heckled and cut off. In 2024, after years of preventing LV4W from having a stall at conference, lawyers finally admitted that the ban breached the Equality Act. Instead of apologising, Lib Dem president Mark Pack said that he ‘regretted’ the presence of LV4W.
Pressed on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg about why women were silenced at Bournemouth, leader Ed Davey said that he was ‘sorry if they are cross’ and claimed that the Lib Dems had already had a ‘full debate’ on the issue. If Davey is doing all he can to avoid talking about this issue, then it is not without reason. The grassroots members of the party are far more aligned with LV4W and Hollowood than with gender ideologues such as Northwood and North or, for that matter, Davey himself. According to a YouGov poll, less than a quarter of Lib Dem members support puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for under-18s. Letting men into women’s sport is also a minority position. Yet rather than listen to its members, or even trust them to be informed by both sides, the Lib Dem leadership has behaved in a way that is neither liberal nor democratic.
The Patsy Calton Award should have been a moment to celebrate women’s contribution to politics, and to honour activists like Hollowood. Instead, it became a monument to the party’s contempt for its own female members. When it comes to sex and gender, the party’s pratfalls aren’t clumsy accidents – they’re deliberate. The joke, however, is clearly on women.
Jo Bartosch is co-author of the upcoming book, Pornocracy. Pre-order it here.