Anti-trans activists share Keir Starmer trans child conspiracy theory

Transphobes have come up with the idea that Labour leader Keir Starmer has a trans son, following a mix-up during an interview about his two teenage children.

Starmer slipped-up during an interview when talking about the potential pressure his 15-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter might be under during a general election. He accidentally said he had two boys.

Labour sources later said it was a slip of the tongue.

Despite the clarification, transphobic bigots immediately jumped into conspiracy mode. Family Education Trust (FET), an anti-trans organisation which has previously voiced opposition to bans on conversion therapy, promoted the idea by asking whether the Labour leader had a “trans-identified child.”

In a post on X/Twitter, it wrote: “He needs to clarify this as the potential future [prime minister] having a trans ID’d child would have a huge impact for policy.”

Other transphobic groups then went into overdrive, making claims that, if Starmer did have a transgender son, his leadership abilities would be compromised and that he should resign immediately.

Other, more level-headed, individuals, shamed the conspiracy theorists.

“You really are revolting people, aren’t you?” journalist Owen Jones said.

And another social media user wrote: “Utterly deranged conspiracy theory doing the rounds on transphobe Twitter. A total brain rot.”

Keir Starmer worries how general election could affect his children

During the interview, Starmer revealed that he and his wife, Victoria, who works in the NHS, are concerned about how a general election could affect their children.

The thought “keeps [him] up at night”, he told Sky News.

“They’re 13 and 15, that’s difficult ages,” he said. “It will impact them, we don’t name them in public, we don’t do photographs with them, they go to the local school and I desperately try to protect them in that way, but I know it’s going to be harder and I do worry about that.”

He also pointed to his concern about the abuse directed at MPs, saying he was also “very concerned” about how that could affect his family.

“I fiercely defend the right to protest,” he said. “But I don’t think we can escape the fact that there are these threats, not necessarily in the protests, in and around, that we must be very, very careful about. We’ve lost parliamentary colleagues in the past so this isn’t just some idle discussion, it is a very serious issue.”

But, despite his concerns, Starmer called for the election to be held “as soon as possible”, after prime minister Rishi Sunak suggested he would seek five more years in power in the second half of 2024.

“If [the PM] has a plan, he would set the date and he should set the date because, at the moment, it’s very hard to see how him continuing in government improves the lives of anybody in the country,” the Labour leader said.