Can Andy Burnham define ‘a woman’? The correct answer is ‘an adult human female’, though I would also accept ‘someone with no chance of being elected leader of the Labour party’. Burnham’s position on gender is under scrutiny after the resurfacing of an exchange from 2022 in which he was asked about men who self-identify as women using female toilets.
Ordinarily, I dislike this kind of journalism. The formulation ‘after past comments resurfaced’ is usually a dead giveaway that a news story isn’t news. The journalist who wrote it, or the editor who commissioned it, wants it to be news, often because they have an axe to grind. I make an exception in this case because Burnham’s answer undercuts his fatuous branding as a salt-of-the-earth, plain-speaking northerner.
Burnham began:
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.
Note how he describes the mainstream view – men should use the men’s, women should use the women’s – like David Attenborough narrating a far-flung tribe’s elaborate ritual to appease the sun god. Of course, for a fully embedded member of the political elite like Burnham, public opinion on this subject is utterly alien, which is why he went on to say: ‘I don’t think that’s a majority view. I think it’s a minority view and quite a small minority view, actually.’ Behold, your tribune of the Mancunian working classes. They like three things up north: whippets, gravy and gender-neutral bathrooms.
