My letter writing campaign to Keir Starmer begins

12th May 2025

Dear Prime Minister

I need your help. I’m the mother of Alice, a transgender woman who died by suicide aged twenty. The coroner at Alice’s inquest ruled: delays in accessing gender affirming healthcare contributed to a preventable death. I talk openly about the circumstances of my child’s death; I’ve written a memoir and newspaper and magazine articles.  It is a perfectly legitimate action, but senior figures who advise government disagree and their stance harms my mental health.

Imagine how traumatising it was for me to read Hilary Cass calling trans campaigners ‘shroud wavers’ (The Times 14/12/2024) for daring to say withdrawal of trans healthcare increases self-harm and suicide attempts. Professor Appleby, author of the DHSC report into suicide at the Tavistock[i] also regularly criticises campaigners on X for speaking out on the risk of trans suicide, and engages with those of gender critical persuasion, but not his detractors. Are you aware data on Alice’s death was omitted from Appleby’s report, despite her death occurring in the period under review? I’ve informed the Secretary of State for Health, but perhaps he didn’t think it significant enough to pass on. Does this information not render Appleby and his review unreliable? Yet, somehow, I’m called out as the bad guy. Please understand I don’t just speak from personal experience. There’s evidence to prove it.[ii]

Other people who raise suicide awareness aren’t criticised this way. In April 2023 the group ‘Three Dad’s Walking’ met Rishi Sunak asking for suicide prevention to be part of the national curriculum. Sunak said, "To have suffered the tragic losses…you have…but then to channel that into raising awareness…it's inspiring…you deserve enormous praise.” Why did these men get a meeting with a Prime Minister, full of praise, whilst I must endure repeated telling offs? The claims made, that trans campaigners exacerbate suicide risk in their community, is victim blaming at its most base.

Why do you and Wes Streeting ignore requests to meet me but Streeting not only met, but empathised with the trauma of parents from the gender critical Bayswater Support Group? A group who have been discovered to promote abusive conversion practices to their members.

I urge you to read my memoir, ‘Her Name Is Alice’ to get an honest and searing insight into what it was like to raise a trans teen in the UK during the last six years. And you must know, since your government is repeatedly legislating against trans people, that the situation has only deteriorated since my youngest daughter died. I believe this decade will come to be recognised as the most hostile in the history of modern trans existence, at least in the UK. My notes to update the epilogue, in time for the release of the paperback next spring, grow more disturbing by the day.

I appreciate you’re very busy, too busy I suppose, to read a memoir by an unknown mother with an axe to grind. But this memoir is worth your time, it’s about a young trans woman after all, and trans matters do appear to take up an inordinate amount of government time, given trans people represent approximately 0.5% of the population. Personally, I’d prefer it if you focussed on other things that would materially improve women’s lives: increasing the rate of prosecution for rape by cis men, or improving maternity services or childcare support; instead of listening to groups that claim to be women’s rights organisations but are simply single-issue groups, set up seemingly with one intention, to diminish trans existence and to side-line trans lives.

But I digress, back to my story, for it’s an important one. It’s not just about Alice, it’s about the struggles of her white, affluent, middle-class, university educated, heteronormative, medic mum to meet her needs. I’m someone you might have met, maybe even liked, at a dinner party in a parallel world. I wasn’t always so confidently pro trans. When Alice came out I had my ‘reasonable concerns’ about the rise of trans people in our society, where had it come from, what did it mean? Particularly what did it mean for Alice? Was she ill, was she being groomed, would she change her mind?

My memoir explores all this, my doubts and fears, hopes and expectations, the successive traumas inflicted upon us as Alice waited and waited for care. It’s a gripping story, well told. A human story. I fear you've lost sight of the fact that at the very centre of this are real people who are hurting because of your parties’ policies.  Trans pain is not the pain of Sex Matters and For Women Scotland, rising from phantasmic threats that portray trans women as predatory, in the bathroom and the boardroom, but the pain of real harm that comes from being constantly denied healthcare or any sort of voice, and now it seems, access to public spaces. So, if not you, perhaps at the very least an advisor, your wife, another relative or decent friend could read Alice’s story - told by me, now she can no longer speak for herself - and let you know their thoughts.

I will never hold my child again, hear her raucous laugh or see her funny little skip when she’s happy.

Currently your government is complicit in policies that inflict harm on the trans community and escalate the risk of more suicides and transphobic attacks. This is your Section 28. Do you really want to be remembered and hated, as Margaret Thatcher is, for introducing your own value laden legislation that will contribute to untold misery in such a vulnerable community? You still have time to change your mind. And I know you can, after all, it was not long ago you accepted trans women are women, but now apparently at the behest of the Supreme Court you do not.

I should not have to spell it out but I will. Trans people are loved by their families: mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, children, grandchildren, aunts, uncles and cousins; by their friends, neighbours and work colleagues. These people represent millions of voters who will not vote for Labour at the next election unless you act now to reverse the harm of the pervasive gender critical ideology that’s been allowed to grow unchecked in society and at the very heart of your government.

I’ve been told I can be snarky and waspish. I hope you don’t find me so. If you do perhaps stop for a moment and wear my shoes. You’d be snarky if your child took their own life, in part due to entirely avoidable state sanctioned cruelty, that you were powerless to change. But perhaps my ask, for you to wear my shoes, is simply impossible for you to imagine; for you do have the power to change things. Not for you the feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and worthlessness that eventually overcame Alice, and sometimes, in my darker moments, circle around me with their siren call to join her.

Sir Starmer, you are listening to the wrong people and history will record it so. You do have the power to stem the flow of anti-trans sentiment that effervesces from your party, like the celebratory champagne on the steps of the Supreme Court back in April. You can put the cork back in the bottle. But you have to want to. You have to know how. Let me help you.

[i] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-suicides-and-gender-dysphoria-at-the-tavistock-and-portman-nhs-foundation-trust/review-of-suicides-and-gender-dysphoria-at-the-tavistock-and-portman-nhs-foundation-trust-independent-report

[ii] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01979-5