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There comes a moment in every politician’s career when it is finally time to bite the hand that once fed them. This step is absolutely crucial in order for a political figure to shake off any legacy obligations and to seize political control over their own immediate future. The obvious example here is that of the normally mild-mannered Harold Wilson, then a Labour Prime Minister, barking at militant trade union leaders to ‘get your tanks off my lawn!’ Timing is always critical here, and especially so in politics, when even a week can famously feel more like a year. So the time is fast approaching when Andy Burnham, shining hope of a revivalist Labour Government, moribund since Starmer’s time, needs to show his mettle by ditching the unhinged Conversion Practices Bill. This article argues that this is an essential step for Burnham to make progress in implementing his wider political agenda.
There are, of course, any number of valid reasons why the Bill, a badly drafted ragbag of trans ideology, urgently needs to disappear. Trans ideology refers here to the belief in an inner gender identity, and corresponding entitlement to social, medical and legal transition. The first argument, which in an ideal world, would be quite sufficient justification on its own, is that the Bill is, quite simply, a bad law.
The Bill as a charter for revenge:
The rationale for a criminal law ban on alleged conversion practices lacks any credible data on prevalence. This inconvenient fact is frankly, if somewhat coyly, admitted by the Bill’s own Impact Assessment. So there is no evidential base to start from in estimating the scale of the supposed problem of conversion. The cost analysis for reform is therefore completely flawed as a result. It relies heavily on a blunt cause-and-effect model to estimate likely harms arising from conversions and the probable savings to be made by implementing such a ban.
The Bill, quite possibly deliberately given its clear origins from within Queer Theory, will also set up long-term destabilising conflicts between criminal and civil law, not least over the core issue of free speech. The Bill seems firmly grounded in a world based on grudge politics. It reads only too convincingly as a vindictive, Stonewall-influenced Revenge Charter for trans activists and their willing allies. It appears to be directly targeted at any parents, children and professionals who might dare to disagree with the trans worldview of the undisputed primacy of gender identity.
The Bill has already been subjected to sustained and comprehensive critique, but no matter. It must pass, because, however bad it may be, it carries privileged status as an electoral Labour Party manifesto commitment. It does not therefore need to be based on compelling evidence, or appear to be legally coherent, or even to be fair and just in its application and consequences. The promised parliamentary scrutiny process provides no reassurance at all, given its apparent overwhelming bias towards trans supporters, already seemingly convinced of the need for the Bill to succeed, and to pass swiftly into law.
Time for a moratorium on the gender wars:
So, for many reasons, the Conversion Practices Draft Bill constitutes bad law. But perhaps more important than this, the Bill will actively block progress, which is only cautiously emerging at this point, of de-escalating the current bitter ‘gender wars’ of the past decade. There is a unique and time-limited opportunity here for Burnham to bring a reflective pause to the current entrenched conflict over sex and the law. Dropping the Bill could then be for the overriding purpose of calling a moratorium on the escalating social conflict over trans claims, and on their damaging impact on the rights of women and children. Burnham could act now to cause peace to temporarily break out, whatever the real strength of feelings on both sides of this massive cultural divide. This chance is not likely to come round again for quite some time. So the timing is right for a symbolic and pragmatic move here by Burnham.
Hence the first and overriding reason for binning the Bill is that it is bad law, trashing existing civil law protections for gender critical free speech established by the Forstater case and by the Equality Act 2010. Secondly, rather than de-escalate conflict over sex and the law, the passing of this Bill will inevitably intensify pressure for further, faster and deeper change by trans activists and their allies.
Increasing the pressure for yet more trans legislation:
The Bill introduces key definitions of claimed identity status into criminal law, including the contested concepts of gender identity, and transgender, non-binary and asexual status, all lacking clear and objective legal definition. This will, in turn, massively increase pressure to introduce gender self-identification into civil law in the very near future. This will further compound current legal conflict and confusion within the courts. Passing the Bill will also accelerate obvious pressures already surfacing in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The result will be a desperate and unnecessary race to the bottom in order to introduce similar punitive bans within their own separate legal jurisdictions in the UK.
Passing the Bill will not satisfy the demands of the trans lobby, or even buy time for Burnham to move on to more obviously pressing issues on his agenda. This is not how parliamentary politics works. No photo opportunity here for Burnham to pose like Neville Chamberlain on the runway at Croydon airport, as a post-modernist appeasement avatar, waving a piece of paper in his hand. Passing the Bill will simply embolden the trans lobby to push for yet more concessions and wider recognition of its privileged /protected status. At this formative, early stage of Burnham’s leadership career, the Bill will give far too much political leverage to the Labour Party’s post-Corbynite activist wing. This will incur for him an enduring political debt towards the party’s activist base, which can never be fully paid off. It will be the equivalent of Burnham enthusiastically paying an enforced road toll, instead of him abolishing the outdated concept of feudal privilege.
Limits of Burnham’s Town Hall rainbow politics:
So the Bill is a bad law. It will intensify, not reduce, the pressure for further concessions to the trans lobby. This is an important point, and reflects the profound weakness of Burnham’s position as Prime Minister, in lacking any clear electoral or moral mandate for introducing proposed sweeping political changes. The Bill represents the very real limitations of his previous parochial ‘Town Hall’ brand of politics as practised so far. US President Trump acidly characterised Burnham as ‘the mayor of a town’ who was ‘extremely liberal’, succinctly capturing both Burnham’s strengths and weaknesses as a political figure.
Burnham’s period in office as Mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017-26 demonstrated his successful strategy in implementing ‘special interest’ campaigns. These were built around prioritising trans issues in employment and public life. Whatever Burnham’s own personal views, experience or investment in this brand of lifestyle politics, it proved to be a remarkably successful political style. This effective model has now been seamlessly adopted by Bev Craig, his successor as Mayor of Greater Manchester.
Yet, this provincial strategy, captured by the telling photo of Burnham and Craig at a 2025 Manchester Pride March under the banner ‘Queer kids deserve safe schools’ can all too easily be simply dismissed at one level as just representing low-risk, high-kudos virtue signalling. At another level, the highly problematic concept of ‘Queer kids’ suggests complete capture by a malign trans fantasy, representing nothing less than a safeguarding nightmare for properly concerned professionals. In reality, the days of constructing rainbow staircases to electoral victory are clearly now over. This is evidenced by Kamala Harris’ ignominious and crushing defeat as Democrat candidate in the 2024 US presidential election.
Pending chaos in the criminal and civil courts:
What worked so well as a political strategy at local level does not necessarily translate effectively to the national or even global arenas. The likely import of the Bill will be to lend the coercive power of the criminal courts to a trans movement which is otherwise in full retreat from its high-water mark of even just a few years ago.
Indeed, the current financial and safeguarding problems surrounding Pride perhaps underline the need for reappraisal of Labour’s links with the trans movement. It may be time to recognise when a brand such as Pride has turned toxic. It can bring only future grief rather than electoral benefits to its closest associates. In supporting a contentious and ill-founded Bill, Burnham runs the appreciable risk of incurring serious future reputational damage. The Bill’s predictable outcomes include the jailing of recalcitrant parents and professionals. It will speed up the overwhelming and potential partial collapse of an already struggling civil Family Court system. This is not a good look by any reasonable standard. Passing this unnecessary and vengeful Bill is no more than froth on the daydream. It is not serious politics, but politics with undoubtedly serious consequences for all concerned, including for Burnham’s own future legacy.
Fighting the battles of the last culture war:
This, in turn, leads on to another critical point. However glossy and eye-catching as a photo opportunity, Burnham’s involvement in a conversion ban is completely irrelevant to his own slowly emerging core political project. This stance requires him to first re-establish a broad mandate via re-election. This will empower him in undertaking a cohesive programme of social re-investment, guided economic growth, rebalancing welfare spending and promoting rapid rearmanent for waging future defensive electronic warfare.
Banning conversion shows an unhealthy pre-occupation on Burnham’s part in energetically re-fighting the battles of the last war, namely the culture wars of the early twenty-first century. In terms of constructing a successful electoral alliance, the ban falls at the first post. It fails the Makerfield test, as being of no intrinsic interest to Labour’s intended core vote, or, indeed, to vast swathes of the public at large. It constitutes nothing more than an ultimately costly distraction from the difficult decisions facing the Prime Minister, in attempting to successfully navigate the tasks of national regeneration and international re-alignment.
Labour’s emotional allegiance to trans causes:
So we have here a bad law, likely failing to satisfy a vociferous trans lobby, reflecting Burnham’s earlier Town Hall origins rather than his current political trajectory, representing a distraction and diversion from engaging in his wider programme of reform. Rather than pursuing an unproductive sideshow, Burnham has here a unique opportunity here to demonstrate a capacity for realpolitik and the crafting of a new and enduring brand of politics.
How would this work? It is striking how the rationale for supporting the conversion ban is so strongly rooted in overwhelmingly emotional reasoning. Hence Emily Thornberry MP, a Labour grandee, talks of trans vulnerability, Lisa Nandy MP of the need to ‘protect the dolls’, while Brigid Phillipson MP’s case for the ban verges somewhat on legal incoherence. This is to ignore cold political reality in favour of an emotionally driven allegiance. The hard truth is that Labour owes no special favours to the trans lobby. In turn, the trans lobby lacks any especially meaningful links to Labour. Indeed, rather disturbingly, trans factions seem equally at home in the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green parties, almost regardless of each party’s unique political configuration and programmatic commitments.
Changing the policy narrative on sex and the law:
In pragmatic terms, Burnham’s support for this shabby Bill will bring little immediate benefit, and will produce only medium-term grief and avoidable future problems. In wider political terms, Burnham could signal a much-needed break with his problematic blokeish appeal, by directly acknowledging and responding to the interests and concerns of the largest chunk of the UK electorate, namely women voters. This support is currently at distinct risk of leaching away to the Conservatives, under the charismatic leadership of Kemi Badenoch. The real risk here is that the Tories now appear as the voice of quiet reason in defending both free speech and women’s sex-based rights, outflanking Labour’s emotionally-based support for a vocal and highly influential trans lobby.
But this political threat also presents Burnham with a key opportunity to take the initiative and recast the political narrative currently being spun by the conversion Bill. Dropping the Bill would enable Burnham to cut right through the existing muddle of so-called gender affirming healthcare. Dropping the Bill would firmly reinforce Labour’s bipartisan commitment to implementing the overdue Cass reforms, based on therapy rather than medical intervention. It would bring the government much more sharply into line with the Supreme Court judgement of April 2025, clarifying the crucial role of sex in applying the Equality Act 2010. It would also neatly avoid the harrowing spectre of prosecution of parents in the criminal courts for misgendering their children on the one hand, while the inevitable medical negligence cases by detransitioners increasingly fill up the civil courts on the other.
Conclusion:
So, Andy Burnham needs to act unceremoniously swiftly to drop the Conversion Practices Bill. The Bill is unfeasibly bad law; it will intensify pressure for still further advances in trans rights; support for the Bill is no more than a useless drag anchor from his political past; the Bill is now completely irrelevant to his emerging programme of wider substantive reforms; and, finally, the correct decision here will demonstrate the right level of realpolitik required for high office. This is Burnham’s very own ‘tanks on the lawn’ moment. Because the brutal truth here is that trans needs Andy more than Andy needs trans.
Peter Jenkins is a member of Thoughtful Therapists. He writes for Critical Therapy Antidote (UK) and Genspect.