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One of Labour’s only transgender councillors has resigned from the party, accusing it of “throwing trans people under the bus”.
In a post on X on Friday morning, Dylan Tippetts, who has represented Compton ward on Plymouth city council since 2022, wrote: “I cannot continue to represent a party that does not support my fundamental rights. I cannot as a trans person continue to support the Labour party.”
Tippetts, who was the first Labour councillor to represent the area, will now sit as an independent and confirmed he would not seek re-election.
He said: “The Labour party nationally has thrown transgender people under the bus and has taken us backwards decades. Everyone deserves the right to live peacefully, and the Labour party continues to deny transgender people that basic right.”
Tippetts’s resignation comes after senior government figures, including Keir Starmer, welcomed the “clarity” provided by the supreme court’s ruling on biological sex.
The UK supreme court ruled last month that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 referred only to “a biological woman” and to “biological sex”, with subsequent advice from the equalities watchdog, the Equality and Humans Rights Commission, amounting to a blanket ban on trans people using toilets and other services of the gender they identify as.
Tippetts said Labour’s response to the supreme court ruling finally convinced him to quit, after growing concerns prompted by the reported shelving of plans to change the gender recognition process, and the health secretary, Wes Streeting’s, stance on access to trans healthcare.
“The government had the chance to consider updating equalities legislation that is clearly out of date, but instead they simply agreed with the ruling and the EHRC guidance and started rolling back on statements like ‘trans women are women’,” said Tippetts.
He added that the ruling and EHRC advice had resulted in “chaos” in terms of use of basic facilities. “I’ve been out for seven years. I’ve had no issues using the men’s toilets and now suddenly I’m getting advice from the council’s legal officers saying I should be using single cubicle toilets, the disabled toilets, which puts me in the really uncomfortable position of taking space away from a disabled person.”
Responding to the judgment, which has sent shock waves through the UK’s transgender community, the prime minister said: “A woman is an adult female, and the court has made that absolutely clear. I actually welcome the judgment because I think it gives real clarity.”
Bridget Phillipson moved to reassure trans people. The equalities minister told the Commons: “The ruling of the supreme court was clear about the importance of biological sex, but I would not want any trans person … anywhere across the country to be fearful.”
Subsequently, the Guardian reported that 14 national LGBTQ+ charities had written to Starmer seeking an urgent meeting to discuss what they described as “a genuine crisis for the rights, dignity and inclusion of trans people in the UK”.
On Thursday a cross-party committee of MPs wrote to the EHRC seeking assurances that its guidance on how organisations interpreted the ruling did not ignore the needs of transgender people.
Tippett said he hoped Starmer’s government would take a moment to reflect. Noting a number of legal challenges being proposed around the ruling, he added: “Our prime minister is a human rights lawyer and he should be nothing short of embarrassed that people in this country feel the need to take his government to the European court of human rights over what’s happening.”
“I thought this level of erosion of trans rights would only happen in Trump’s America.”
A spokesperson for Plymouth Labour said: “We are very disappointed that Cllr Tippetts has taken the decision to resign from the Labour party after he was informed on Thursday evening that he was being replaced as chair of the taxi licensing committee.
“The residents of Compton ward deserve three committed councillors so we hope Cllr Tippetts will work hard to represent them during his final year in office.”
