ANNA MIKHAILOVA: Sir Keir Starmer’s trans ‘drivel’ is reported to the equalities watchdog

Sir Keir Starmer has been reported to the equalities watchdog, I can reveal.

The Leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition has drawn complaints over the answer he gave when asked: what is a woman?

Members of the public have asked the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to get involved over his response that ‘trans women are women’.

J. K. Rowling had already waded in. The Harry Potter author said Labour could ‘no longer be counted on to defend women’s rights‘.

Senior party figures have gone further, and said such ‘drivel’ is alienating so-called Red Wall voters who defected to the Tories at the 2019 General Election.

In a recent newspaper interview, human rights QC Starmer said: ‘A woman is a female adult, and, in addition to that, trans women are women, and that is not just my view, that is actually the law. It has been the law through the combined effects of the 2004 [Gender Recognition] Act and the 2010 [Equality] Act.

‘So that’s my view. It also happens to be the law in the UK.’

You’d think, having been Director of Public Prosecutions for almost five years, he should know.

But an EHRC source tells me some of the complaints say Starmer is misrepresenting the law.

A former Labour Minister said last night: ‘There’s not a single person in the country who used to vote Labour, but backed Boris, whom Starmer will win back by appealing to trendy teenagers and woke students with this drivel.

‘He needs to get out of London and listen to people in places such as Sedgefield, Walsall and Bassetlaw who will have no problem telling him in plain English what a woman is.’

All this raises another question: ‘What is an effective Leader of the Opposition?’

It was only a matter of time before the P&O scandal was linked to former Transport Secretary Chris ‘failing’ Grayling. 

He reportedly oversaw the legal change in 2018 that allowed the ferry company to legally sack 800 staff. 

At the time the law was changed, P&O’s owner, DP World, was led in the UK by Chris Lewis. 

Now a backbencher, Grayling is paid £100,000 a year as a ‘strategic adviser’ to Hutchison Ports Europe, whose UK boss is… Chris Lewis.

Strong-arm tactic of Tory enforcer Chris

It’s no pain, no gain for the new Chief Whip, who is quietly letting MPs know that his weekend hobby is… power-lifting.

Chris Heaton-Harris films himself deadlifting 190kg – about 420lb – and sources in the Whips’ office confirm that flexing pecs is going to be ‘his thing’. 

The 54-year-old Tory enforcer may be able to crush puny dissenters but power-lifting the Government’s reputation back to life could prove him to be more Olive Oyl than Popeye.

Police Minister Kit Malthouse told the Commons that his thoughts were with the family of Daniel Morgan as he spoke about a damning report on the Metropolitan Police’s corrupt, incompetent and uncaring approach to tackling the axe murder of the private investigator in 1987.

But Malthouse forgot to alert the Morgan family in advance.

The omission drew a stinging rebuke from Daniel’s brother Alastair, who said ‘nobody in the Government had the courtesy to tell us’ about the statement.

He wondered if the Police Minister was simply ‘a buffer between anyone sensible and Priti Patel’.

The Home Secretary angered Alastair Morgan last year for delaying publication of the eight-year inquiry that found the Met’s response to the unsolved murder to be ‘institutionally corrupt’.

I hear Malthouse quickly offered the Morgans a Zoom meeting on Friday afternoon.

Sadly, officials were unable to make the connection work properly. Another shambles.