Belgium’s transgender deputy PM blasts Rishi Sunak and tells him not to ‘join the bullies’ after his ‘hurtful’ speech about gender issues at Tory conference
- Petra De Sutter, the most senior transgender politician in Europe, accused Sunak of ‘fuelling transphobia’ after he said ‘a man is a man and a woman is a woman’
Belgium’s transgender deputy Prime Minister has blasted Rishi Sunak and told him not to ‘join the bullies’ following his ‘hurtful’ speech about gender issues at the Tory conference.
Petra De Sutter, the most senior transgender politician in Europe, accused Sunak of ‘fuelling transphobia’ after he said ‘a man is a man and a woman is a woman’.
Sunak told the audience in Manchester on Wednesday: ‘We shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can’t, a man is a man and a woman is a woman. That’s just common sense.’
Sutter condemned Sunak’s comments on Thursday, describing them as ‘hurtful and very disappointing’.
‘These words are fuelling transphobia and endangering the lives of many people around the world,’ Sutter wrote on Twitter. ‘Trans women are women. And in no way a threat to others. Don’t join the real bullies Rishi Sunak.’
Her comments came as it emerged that hate crimes against transgender people have hit a record high in England and Wales, with police recording an 11 per cent rise in the last year.
Petra De Sutter, the most senior transgender politician in Europe, accused Sunak of ‘fuelling transphobia’ after he said ‘a man is a man and a woman is a woman’. Pictured: Sutter taking the oath of office in October 2020
Sunak told the audience in Manchester on Wednesday: ‘We shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can’t, a man is a man and a woman is a woman. That’s just common sense.’
While the overall number of hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales has fallen year-on-year for the first time in a decade, those motivated by religious and transgender hate have risen.
There were 4,732 transgender hate crimes recorded in the year ending in March 2023. In the accompanying notes published alongside the statistics yesterday, the Home Office said the rise could be due to transgender issues being ‘heavily discussed’ by politicians, the media and on social media.
Indeed, Sutter accused Sunak of ‘fuelling transphobia and endangering the lives’ of transgender people following his speech.
Sutter has herself been targeted by transphobia. Just days after she was historically appointed as Belgium’s Vice Prime Minister in October 2020, the politician was attacked online by a far-right politician.
Bart Claes, of the far-right, nationalist Flemish Interest party, accused the deputy prime minister, who was born male but transitioned at age 40, of wanting ‘to destroy and replace all the cornerstones of our Western civilisation’.
Meanwhile, during Sunak’s speech on Wednesday, the Prime Minister had also weighed in on debates about sex education.
He said: ‘It shouldn’t be controversial for parents to know what their children are being taught in school about relationships, patients should know when hospitals are talking about men or women.’
His comments follow a conference in which multiple Cabinet members have used their own speeches to mention transgender issues, with Health Secretary Steve Barclay announcing a ban on trans women from female NHS wards and Home Secretary Suella Braverman saying she would forbid sex offenders from changing gender.
The subject has been an increasingly important one for activists on the right of the Conservative Party, with two stands at the conference centre in Manchester focused on the issue.
It has been an issue for the ‘New Conservatives’ faction led by backbenchers Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, which has also expressed concern about sex education and claimed parents are prevented from knowing what their children are being taught.
But the party membership is not united on transgender issues.
Pictured: Rishi Sunak with his wife Akshata Murty during the Tory party conference on Wednesday
Ms Braverman’s speech a day before the Prime Minister’s, in which she attacked ‘gender ideology’ and a ‘privileged woke minority’, prompted heckling that saw Conservative London Assembly member Andrew Boff removed from the conference centre.
Mr Boff said after his removal: ‘This Home Secretary was basically vilifying gay people and trans people by this attack on LGBT ideology, or gender ideology. It is fictitious, it is ridiculous.
‘It is a signal to people who don’t like people who are LGBT+ people.’
If the Prime Minister echoed Braverman’s language on ‘virtue signalling’ and transgender people, Sunak appeared to distance himself from the Home Secretary on the subject of multiculturalism.
In his speech on Wednesday, the Prime Minister celebrated the UK’s multiculturalism and described the country as ‘the most successful multi-ethnic democracy on Earth’.
He added: ‘I am proud to be the first British-Asian Prime Minister, but you know what? I am even prouder that it is just not a big deal.’
In a speech in the US last week, Ms Braverman had attacked the ‘misguided dogma’ of multiculturalism, saying it had ‘failed’, comments that the Prime Minister declined to endorse.
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