Men must be part of the solution when it comes to tackling violence against women - Bill Carmichael

“I want my daughter to grow up in a world where girls everywhere are empowered and where not only their rights are realised, but their aspirations too.”

If I understand his comments correctly, Sir Keir is stating that girls and women are disadvantaged by their biological sex, and that as a society we should act to break down the barriers that stop them from reaching their full potential. Hear hear!

If genuine, and I have no reason to think it is not, this marks a welcome return to sanity by the Labour Party which in recent years has been gripped by the gender madness that holds the totally unscientific belief that men can become women if they want to and vice versa.

According to this ideology, what determines a woman or a man isn’t biological facts, but exactly the damaging sort of gender stereotypes that Sir Keir is talking about. In other words, if you like make-up and pretty dresses, you must be a girl, and if you prefer climbing trees and playing soldiers, you must be a boy.

In recent years we’ve been treated to a comical clown show of senior Labour figures tying themselves in knots when asked the seemingly simple question: “What is a woman?”

For example in 2021 Sir Keir said it was wrong to say “only women have a cervix”, and more recently he opined that 99.9 per cent of women “haven’t got a penis”, leaving open the mind boggling possibility that 0.1 per cent have one.

Meanwhile, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, seemed to suggest that a man could grow a cervix if he really wanted one, and another Shadow Cabinet minister was keen on putting rapists in women’s prisons. It was this latter issue, when the Scottish government tried to put a convicted double rapist into a women’s jail, that saw the whole gender house of cards begin to collapse in the UK.

The public was outraged, and Labour realised the tide was turning and desperately tried to row back from its previous positions. The party has U-turned on gender self recognition, without any medical diagnosis, and has now pledged to protect single sex spaces, such as hospital wards, prisons, rape crisis centres, changing rooms and toilets. According to a survey commissioned by the charity there is widespread disillusionment about politics among women and girls.

Just 15 per cent of 14 to 24 year olds questioned said they believed political leaders act in their best interests, and almost half (47 per cent) said they had lost trust in politics and a fifth said political decisions had made them stop engaging in politics.

Who can blame them? Is it any wonder they feel ignored and disregarded when senior political figures struggle to even define what a woman is?

To publicise International Day of the Girl on Wednesday, Manchester’s Labour Mayor, Andy Burnham, and Conservative MP Caroline Nokes, had their roles “taken over” by girls for the day to help make their voices heard. And former US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton handed over her Instagram account to two girls. I am sure this will be good fun for the girls involved, but at the risk of being labelled a bit of a grump, I say these are publicity stunts that largely ignore the biggest issue facing women and girls - male violence.

Wherever you look, from the British courts on pretty much every day of the week, to the vile misogyny of regimes like Saudi Arabia and Iran, to the depraved and disgusting violence of Hamas terrorists in southern Israel, men’s hatred of women is evident.

It is a problem caused by men, and men must be part of the solution. For a start the British police should stop hounding women for holding perfectly reasonable - and legally protected - views on sex and gender.

Instead they should concentrate on improving the abysmal detection and conviction rates for violent crimes against women, including rape and sexual assault, ånd we should impose punitive sentences for those convicted.

If we really want to improve the lives of women and girls the most important thing is for the police and the criminal justice system to offer some proper protection.