Shapeshifting Burnham ditches trans rights to panic-grab Reform votes
Greater Manchester mayor and Makerfield by-election hopeful Andy Burnham has dumped his past defence of Trans people to protect his bid for Westminster, it seems. Journalist Alex Wickham has revealed that Burnham now backs the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) restrictions on single-sex spaces. This u-turn appears to be nothing but a transparent bid for Reform votes, something we could have predicted coming a mile off.
NEW: Another Andy Burnham u-turn appeared designed at dropping his past positions to win Reform votes
He says he supports the EHRC guidance on single sex spaces and the Supreme Court ruling
Previously he said trans women should be able to use female toilets
— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) May 22, 2026
A political shapeshifter
This policy shift directly contradicts Burnham’s previous stance and public record. He had previously slammed single-sex restrictions on bathrooms, claiming only a minority of people object to Trans women using female toilets.
However, the EHRC has now laid its 300-page statutory, and very confusing legislation before parliament on Thursday 21 May 2026. The new rules allow providers of services to exclude Trans people from single-sex spaces like hospital wards and bathrooms. And of course, Burnham has bent to government pressure and has toed the line. And not least of all because his bid for Westminster could be scuppered by Reform UK.
This updated code creates a total mess of legalese that simply ignores everyday, lived experiences. As a relatively masculine cis woman, this new code scares me. The thought that I could be stopped going to the toilet by some dude because I have a partially shaved head and a deeper voice is unsettling as hell. And where does this end? Are we going to have genital inspectors on the door, offering you a polo and a spritz of perfume if your body conforms enough to get in? And if this is a scary thought for me, how the hell are our Trans brothers and sisters feeling right now? And what about Intersex people? Urgh, this reeks of misogyny. Any woman who sees this legislation as a positive has no idea the power they have just given to a male dominated society.
Trans rights lead Jess O’Thompson warns it treats trans people as a third sex by forcing them to use separate spaces, which violates human rights law. O’Thompson stated:
It still treats Trans people as a third sex, suggesting they should be made to use separate spaces – entirely ignoring the harm this causes, and human rights law. We will keep fighting this discriminatory approach.
Prioritising legal definitions over reality means the EHRC creates an even more hostile environment for people who just want to live their lives. We need to just learn to leave people alone.
Reform has Burnham running scared, it seems
This ridiculous u-turn comes as Burnham is campaigning as Labour candidate for the Makerfield by-election. The safe-seat was specifically resigned by Josh Simons to give Burnham a clear path to return to Westminster.
But then again, Burnham may have a reason to panic, as Reform candidate Robert Kenyon may actually pose a threat. Burnham needs to win back a fifth of the voters who have drifted to Reform to secure the seat. And what better way to do that than to throw Trans people under the bus?
Look he’s desperate to win the by-election and one day emerge as PM. Principles and previous policy opinions are completely dispensable- 4 U turns this week already. Consistent with how he was when last MP. He will let down his soft left supporters. https://t.co/bFFWGueoeg
— Gwynoro Jones (@Gwynoro) May 22, 2026
Additionally to this, he has pivoted on a number of policies to win those votes back. He used to say he wanted the UK to rejoin the EU in his lifetime. Binned that one on Thursday, claiming it wasn’t a priority. Actually more likely because Makerfield constituents voted overwhelmingly to leave. His previous criticisms of Westminster’s fiscal rules on strict borrowing limits? Binned.
Burnham has proven he’s willing to throw marginalised people under the bus for a sniff of a seat in Westminster. The question is, will the people of Makerfield see through it? Or are they going to be happy to elect a man who shapes his principles around nothing but gaining more power?
Time will tell.
Featured image via Facebook
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“It still treats Trans people as a third sex, suggesting they should be made to use separate spaces – entirely ignoring the harm this causes, and human rights law. We will keep fighting this discriminatory approach.”
Trans people ARE a third sex, ffs. A transwoman is not a woman, nor now a man, but something inbetween, no matter how much wishful thinking is employed. While most are probably legit, there WILL be a significant minority who were severely troubled males who spot an opportunity to abuse by “transitioning”. This is just human nature.
They are not women. They are highly mentally disturbed men who want the “right” to go into women’s spaces, for not wholesome reasons.
Giving them a safe space OF THEIR OWN – now they look too strange for men’s toilets – is the decent thing to do for them, protecting women who have good reasons not to want them around in private spaces.
Naturally, considering they transitioned specifically to get access to women’s places, they scream blue bloody murder.
From my experience, transwomen who behave humbly, go out of their way not to be offensive, have very little problems anywhere. It is the minority who are abusers, who scream and rant about “Denying their humanity” – behaviour just like the Zionazi hasbara btw – who are causing all the havoc.
Having YOUR OWN SPACE is not denying your humanity.
There are very good reasons why women fought for centuries to have their own spaces free of menfolk – and having tits from drugs doesn’t change that equation. They are NOT women.
I feel sorry that this minority has so traduced the public discussion that normal intersex folk are now having troubles, I genuinely am. The male gender causes most problems (Not that Nazis like Kaya Callous, VDL, Thatcher, female corporate leaders, or any female frontbencher in the UK make women saints), and that doesn’t change just with some artificially induced physical gender changes.
As for Burnham, wtf did you expect? The guy is a soft-B’Liarite neolib windsock, hardly a Ken Livingstone or Galloway, let alone a Corbyn.
He can spot the way the wind is blowing. That wind may change again in a decade or so (Or not, as the inevitable sexual abuses start piling up so even Millennials/Gen Z can spot there might be a problem with theory over practice).
He doesn’t need the headache of fighting the corporate media over this, while simultaneously fighting Reform over racism.
“considering they transitioned specifically to get access to women’s places”: provide good evidence for that claim or withdraw it and admit you lied. Trans people are men and women. Your comment, coming as it does from Farage-loving, hard right ideology, is repulsive.
Sounds like they already took the evangelical shilling and are now so far right, they are off the scale.
I’m not ANY kind of Xian, – Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Atheist or Satanic.
Nor am I in the slightest right wing, as it happens.
Keep going, next I’ll be a blue-skinned alien from Pandora in your wild guesses… tbf you’ll be getting warmer than in that post.
It’s really quite straightforward, isn’t it? And I quite evidently didn’t say ALL Transwomen, I went out of my way to say this was likely still a minority of those ex-men.
The straightforwardness of it is that they have been offered their OWN spaces, and scream blue murder that this isn’t satisfactory to them. They DEMAND to be let into women’s spaces.
You don’t need to have brains of Hawkins to realise that what they wanted is precisely what schoolboys who find a hole in the girls changing rooms want to do – observe naked women.
As for “evidence” of this, it is like asking for evidence that people cheat at games, and refuse to believe that people would ever do such dastardly things. You are living in some dreamworld, and I’m not going to waste any time on waking up such a blind idiot who is ruled by ideology over reality.
Yeah… like offering black people their own spaces wasn’t ever racist, then? Trans women are no threat to women anywhere, as evidence clearly shows – but the hard right don’t do evidence, as their opposition to vaccines and their climate science denial demonstrate. Your refusal to accept the reality of trans men and trans women, and your rejection of the excellent science supporting equal rights – including in sports – undermine your arguments completely.
Except “Blackness” isn’t actually a real thing, is it? Minus the small effect of extra melanin, the classic “racism” is built on nothing except surface differences. It is effectively like blue eyed people deciding green eyed people are a different ‘race’, which is in toto ridiculous.
And so is your argument.
According to you therefore, there is no difference in gender, and everyone should be able to use whatever toilets they want willy-nilly, because otherwise it is “racism-like”.
Until completely transitioned, transwomen are as dangerous as other men. IE, most will probably be OK, but there’s always that dangerous minority – especially if they feel “privileged”.
“and your rejection of the excellent science supporting equal rights – including in sports”
Equal rights in sport? WTF does that even mean? Are you arguing for unisex sports rather than gender segregation? Sure, let’s do that.
After all, having a born-male physique doesn’t actually impart any advantages, does it?
I presume you think that women are just crapper at sports generally, or they’re just lazy, rather than having any actual physical disadvantages then.
That’s a lot of text just to tell us you’re ignorant.
This is balderdash, assaults upon women in women’s spaces by trans women = 0
You evidently have not got the first clue about the scientific facts of the matter at hand and are instead injecting your own bigotry into the situation.
For example you said: “Trans people ARE a third sex, ffs. A transwoman is not a woman, nor now a man, but something in-between, no matter how much wishful thinking is employed. While most are probably legit, there WILL be a significant minority who were severely troubled males who spot an opportunity to abuse by “transitioning”. This is just human nature.
They are not women. They are highly mentally disturbed men who want the “right” to go into women’s spaces, for not wholesome reasons.”
^^ Which is both scientifically illiterate and disgusting on your part.
Science is very clear, there are only two sexes, male, and female, that is the biological start and end of the matter. Generally nature can throw the odd curve ball where you may get a man born with female genitalia or vice versa but chromosomally they are either male or female. Full stop. So no, trans people are not a third sex.
Now when it comes to gender, that is a neurological matter just like sexuality and sits on a spectrum just like sexuality. Most people will polarise at one end or the other but there will always be a scattering of people across that given neurological spectrum. And for this reason there are and can be more than two established genders.
As for trans people wanting to use the bathroom of their choice, they have been doing so ever since public toilets were created and for the most part no one noticed, that’s the point, nor over that circa 150 year history of public bathrooms has there been some epidemic of male born trans people transitioning to a feminine gender just to stare at other women in a public bathroom, your suggestion is delusional and stupuid. For you to fear monger that a person wanting to use the appropriate bathroom for their gender may just a person wanting to “go into women’s spaces, for not wholesome reasons”, is disgusting and wrong of you, and clearly shows your own bigotry as not once did you mention the fact there are trans people born female who identify as masculine gender types who will be using male bathrooms.
Until you know the difference between biological sex and neurological gender, perhaps you should just shut your trap on such matters as you do nothing a service by opening it and do yourself a disservice in the process. This is an issue that only impacts 0.7% of the population, find something better to worry about that you actually know your arse from your elbow over.
What a load of ahistorical, unscientific, pseudoscience crap. India – along with other traditional polytheistic pagan societies, has recognised “Intersex” as a category for THOUSANDS OF YEARS.
Ask the Canary intersex journalist Rose/Alex Cocker if they are definitely male or female, and prepare for justified abuse.
As for your ludicrous claim that NO male transitioners have considered the voyeuristic aspect of transitioning when making their decision… words absolutely fail. You are on another planet.
EVERYTHING that can be gamed WILL be gamed – that is part of the normal human condition.
A wise society recognises this and puts limits on such gaming, fx maximum wealth limits, workers rights, environmental protections, minority protections, jury trials, religious tolerance, and protecting single sex refuge spaces.
Of course up until now the rare use of female toilets in extremis by non-women hasn’t been an issue – the transgressors were rare, polite, and knew they didn’t have a “right” to be there. With the onset of easily-available medical ‘transitioning’ into an intersex state, that situation has been changed.
Sounds to me like YOU are the “Christian” type that I was accused of being in a post above.
Surprised you didn’t say “God only made two sexes”, tbh!
“as not once did you mention the fact there are trans people born female who identify as masculine gender types who will be using male bathrooms.”
Your lack of reading skills is noted, and is also not unexpected. I most definitely mentioned that in this discussion thread. As I pointed out, we don’t care about that, for some very good reasons. Women with “ex-men” in their spaces on the other hand DO have something to worry about, what with over half of them being seriously sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, in the UK.
If you can’t trust your “uncles” or other male relatives, you sure as shit shouldn’t be trusting complete strangers with that same mentality of “privilege and impunity”.
The very behaviour of DEMANDING access illustrates why it should not be given.
I have known transpeople of both variations, some very well indeed, and the ones I know are humble, and would LIKE to be able to use the facilities of the gender they look like now, but recognise that it is not a RIGHT for them to do so – and with that attitude, I’ve never heard from them that they had a problem when they did.
It is the very mentality of thinking by the more unbalanced of the group that they have now privilege that exposes their patriarchal arrogance, that also illustrates why they shouldn’t be trusted with this access.
A paradox? Perhaps, but a very common one in human social relations.
Those who reach for power are the very ones who should not have it.
Excellent response until you blame men for most of the troubles in the world. Don’t forget there are plenty of evil women who do little better generally or when then get into positions of power in business or politics.
Women are capable of doing plenty of harmin the world.
Why on earth would people get essentially chemically castrated (I’m very happy about that btw, I don’t want the stupid thing) to apparently go out and sexually assault women. I’m a straight trans woman and this constant implication that I must be a predator of a gender Im not even into just gets so very sickening.
The notion that OTHER people must share your common sense and sense of decency is heartwarming, but very naive.
People do stupid shit all the time that either doesn’t make any sense or else is blatantly flawed even on their own premises – an obvious example is the Ramadan War on Iran, which had zero chance of success to anyone even slightly knowledgeable of the situation; or the PNAC/Saudi/Zionist destruction of the WTC in order to begin a war in West Asia that would inevitably bankrupt the USA for little gain whatsoever and catastrophe for the local victims.
In short, despite the argument given by the Mitchell and Webb comedians; assuming that everyone shares your values, perspective, and course of actions, is foolish.
As it sounds you used to be a male yourself, you will be aware that such stupid behaviour is ridiculously common among your former peer group, epitomised by the phrase: “Hold my beer”, and the high % of the Darwin Awards awarded to that gender.
So, while it may not “Make any sense” TO YOU, the idea that this attitude will be universal is rather questionable. I’m sure you’re aware by now that not every male who transitioned is a living saint, and some – as in every group – are downright potentially dangerous. They were dangerous as men, and the process of transitioning does not automatically make them good people.
It is sad this is the case, and frankly I also think the dangers of (Natural) women-on-women violence have been underestimated badly in this discussion, but on this issue many feminists have chosen to put their foot down, and that IS their right do so.
Can you explain WHY it is so degrading to use unisex toilets, in your opinion? Most people seem to prefer not having to share that space while they do their business.
In fact it seems there’s only one group in society outraged at the shift to universal unisex public toilets.
You can understand how suspicious that looks, I’m sure. And not just to TERFs.
“Can you explain WHY it is so degrading to keep black people out of white people’s spaces?” That is the historical essence of the hard right’s argument against trans men in cisgender men’s spaces and trans women in cis women’s spaces. I doubt you can understand how suspicious that looks.
I’ve answered this specious argument above, but you’re clearly the kind of person who needs repetition before anything will hang around in that rattling brain.
“Blackness” isn’t real – male and female differences are. Albeit more culturally determined than usually accepted, nonetheless the statistics on rape, as in perp and victim are hard to dismiss. Might have something to do with the shapes of penis and vagina, but that’s just a wild guess on my part, tbh.
I am slightly appalled that someone promoting blatant racism posts on the Canary, making out that pseudoscience “race” is equivalent to actual biology.
Do you have any other holes you wish to dig for yourself?
There are trans men, you know, but cis men and nouveau feminists always obsess about trans women. Here’s a novel thought: acknowledge that all of us are human beings with bladders and urethras and simply need to pee? The appearance, especially in enlightened parts of the USA, of ‘male, female,, and whatever’ loos seems easily to have solved the problem that febrile imaginations have created.
Are you, like our right-wing government, the billionairess JK Rowling, the hard right For Women Scotland et al, demanding that trans people use only unisex facilities?
Don’t be silly, I’ve yet to hear of a single man being upset because a TransMAN wants to use the blokes. Probably something to with the numbers of men being raped by someone with a vagina being quite low compared to the inverse.
And also because anyone who would willingly *choose* to go into ‘the Male Bogs’ is to be respected as a hardcore wannabe-male, one of us, whatever their background.
So no, despite your demented ideologising, the only problem is that many *women* don’t want these dick-waving, privilege-demanding, “ex-men” in their spaces, can’t fucking imagine why considering how so many of them behave online with their tantrums and exorbitant demands.
The demand to exclude trans people from single-sex spaces does not come from a majority of ordinary working class men and women, but from a hard right campaign funded by billionaires such as JK Rowling and Elon Musk. It is a ruling-class diktat against largely working class trans men and trans women. Dividing the working class against itself on spurious grounds such as a non-existent problem caused by trans people is an old tactic. That you show yourself firmly on the side of the ruling class against the working class… well, that’s a problem you need to address.
Ahh, smear campaigns. When your arguments falter, grab for the adhoms.
Absolutely classic.
I will accept your de facto ungraceful surrender gracefully… more or less.
Of course, I could point out all the hard-right Billionaires who support posthumanism and transhumanism, such as Thiel, who take your side of the debate, and I’m sure you just LOOOVE Palantir. But why bother?
If you don’t have an argument to counter, that says everything.
With huge numbers of outstanding rape cases involving men where women often give up because they can’t receive justice it does shock me that Terfs continue to spread lies about Trans women.
Back to Burnham, what is it with these Labour wonks and their meaningless slogans? Andy is “For Us”! How vague and empty. No different from Starmer’s, “Change”. Something he lost down the back of a sofa.
It’s like “Your” Party. One of the worst, nondescript names for a political party ever invented. And look where it ended up.
Having seen the number of reactionary u-turns Burnham is making I hope he loses. It will throw Labour into complete crisis. Hopefully that will be the final nail in Starmer’s coffin and force the left to unite and build a Left alternative finally. One can dream…
😆😆😆😆😆
We’re told so often about the humble origins of Starmer and some of the Labour leadership. How they struggled to climb the greasy pole.
But think about it, why would anyone from any background who has reached the upper echelons of the establishment give it all up over principles?
Starmer has reached the top. Nothing else matters. Burnham is hoping for the same. That is the goal, not improving the lot of the little people they left behind.
All those years of wearing their roots on their sleeves that got them where they are just get in the way now they are successful. That’s at the root of Blairism, Starmerism and now Burnhamite politics.
Excellent response until you blame men for most of the troubles in the world. Don’t forget there are plenty of evil women who do little better generally or when then get into positions of power in business or politics.
Women are capable of doing plenty of harmin the world.