J.K. Rowling, previously a big supporter and donor of the UK’s Labour Party, has penned a blistering attack on the party’s current leadership, accusing it of “abandoning women” in its ongoing chasm over trans rights.
The Harry Potter author wrote in The Times of London that Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer – currently expected to win the UK’s generation election on July 4 – has been “dismissive and often offensive” in his approach to concerns raised by gender-critical feminists, and that certain women politicians have received no support.
And she added that, despite her previous support for the party, she would now “struggle to vote for the party.”
In her article, Rowling addressed Starmer directly, saying:
“If you continue to insist that the most vulnerable must embrace your luxury beliefs, no matter the cost to themselves, I don’t trust your judgment and I have a poor opinion of your character.
“An independent candidate is standing in my constituency who’s campaigning to clarify the Equality Act. Perhaps that’s where my X will have to go on July 4. As long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women fighting to retain the rights their foremothers thought were won for all time, I’ll struggle to support them.”
Rowling has long weathered controversy over her support of women’s rights. Last month, she said she had been surprised by colleagues who had condemned her views in public, only for them to email her privately to check they remained friends.
“People who’d worked with me rushed to distance themselves from me or to add their public condemnation of my blasphemous views,” she wrote, in an extract from the book The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, published in The Times.