London Thanasis Gavos

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is strongly criticized by the opposition and political commentators on the occasion of a joke he attempted from the floor of the House of Commons in an attempt to blame Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer for a lack of stable seats.

At the midday prime minister’s questions session, Mr Sunak claimed the main opposition leader had changed his stance on a number of issues, including the “how a woman is defineda”.

It was a reference to Mr Starmer’s decision last year to withdraw support for gender self-identification, a concept which means a person can legally change gender without a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

“Of course it was only a 99% attitude reversal“, Mr Sunack joked, a reference to an earlier statement by Keir Starmer that “99.9% of women don’t have a penis».

The government is stricter on issues related to gender self-identification and in this way the prime minister obviously wanted to show that the Conservatives have a clearer position on such issues.

However, the criticism is leveled because Esther Jay happened to be in the galleries of the House of Commons at the time of the debate, whose presence Mr. Starmer had pointed out shortly before the specific poem.

It is about the mother of 16-year-old transgender student Brianna Jay, who was stabbed 28 times by two of her friends.

The case came back into the spotlight just last week with the sentencing and the judge’s decision to name the juvenile perpetrators, Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Radcliffe, both 15 when they murdered Brianna on February 11, 2023 in a Cheshire village.

Mr Starmer reacted angrily to the Prime Minister’s “joke”, while opposition MPs shouted “shame”. A Labor MP later called on Mr Sunak to apologize for his “insensitive joke” to Ms Jay, which the Prime Minister did not do.

At the end of the discussion, however, Rishi Sunak said that Brianna’s mother, who has moved the British people with her dignified attitude, “deserves everyone’s admiration”.

A Downing Street spokesman later said the Prime Minister’s comment was about Keir Starmer’s changes of position and was not a transphobic comment.