u/evie-e-e

Apparently Andy Burnham is doing an AMA on Reddit today at 5 PM! Get your questions in!

With Burnham being allegedly more left wing (we’ll see how it goes in practice) than Starmer, will his rise to leader of the Labour Party hurt Green Party polling? What can we do to keep forward momentum on polling and membership numbers? IMO the Manchester mayoral election is a key step to proving we’re still competitive going into the next GE

Hannah Spencer MP
Member of Parliament for Gorton and Denton House of Commons, London SWIA OAA
4 June 2026
Rt Hon Sir Keir Starmer KCB KC MP
Prime Minister
Dear Keir and Bridget,
Reject the EHRC's Code of Practice
I am writing to echo the letter written by the Interim Women and Equalities lead of the Parliamentary Green Party, Sian Berry, to raise serious concerns over proposed guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is not fit for purpose and will harm trans people living in the UK.
The Code of Practice for services, public functions, and associations is the culmination of years of well-funded campaigns to drive a minority group out of British public life. It sets out a system of segregation where trans people are excluded from services and spaces that reflect their gender, and in some cases also excluded from services and spaces that reflect their sex assigned at birth. Where unisex facilities exist, trans people will be forced into them. Where they do not exist, trans people will be left with nowhere to go.
Your own Equalities Impact Assessment \[1\] on the code admits there will be a significant impact on those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment - from forcing trans people to out themselves by using disabled toilets to putting trans women at greater risk of sexual violence by making them use men's services.
The Code of Practice is both cruel and confusing. Inconsistencies between the Code of Practice and its Equalities Impact Assessment, the Gender Recognition Act and the European Convention on Human Rights will leave organisations and service providers at risk of litigation from all sides. Frontline staff in spaces like cafes, gyms, and offices will be forced to police gender, whilst the costs of creating self-contained gender neutral facilities are estimated by your advisors as reaching £600m, which the government is providing no funding to cover \[2\]. I am pleased to see associations, like the Women's Institute and Girlguiding, given a potential route to serving trans and cisgender women, but this does not counteract the pain caused by the majority of the guidance.

By enacting this guidance, trans people will simply be scapegoated. Research by Translucent found there was just one complaint to English Unitary Authorities in 2025 concerning trans women's use of single-sex spaces, such as toilets and changing rooms
\[3\]. By refusing to act, your government is once again playing politics with trans people's lives, rather than tackling real problems, like the soaring cost of living, rising inequality and the ongoing climate crisis.
Trans people of all ages and backgrounds exist in communities across the country - and always have. They have every right to thrive just as their cisgender friends, family members, and colleagues do. When Labour brought in the Gender Recognition Act in 2004 it promised trans people they could live their lives with peace, privacy, and dignity.
Now you are breaking that promise.
I believe there is a real risk of trans people being essentially segregated from public spaces. I urge you to withdraw the code and take legislative action to create an equalities framework that protects trans people's safety, dignity and humanity.
Yours sincerely,
Hannah
1 Equality impact assessment. EHRC, May 2026.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/equality-act-2010-draft-code-of-practice-for-services-public-
functions-and-associations-2026/equality impact-assessment
2 Final stage impact assessment, 9. Minimising administrative and compliance costs for preferred option. EHRC, May 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/equality-act-2010-draft-code-of-practice-for-services-
public-functions-and-associations-2026/final-stage-impact-assessment#minimising-administrative-and-
compliance-costs-for-preferred-option
3 Trans Women and Single-Sex Spaces: 2026 UK Council FOl Report. Translucent. June 2026.
https://translucent.org.uk/trans-women-and-single-sex-spaces-2026-uk-council-foi-report/

Hannah Spencer MP
Member of Parliament for Gorton and Denton House of Commons, London SWIA OAA
4 June 2026
Rt Hon Sir Keir Starmer KCB KC MP
Prime Minister
Dear Keir and Bridget,
Reject the EHRC's Code of Practice
I am writing to echo the letter written by the Interim Women and Equalities lead of the Parliamentary Green Party, Sian Berry, to raise serious concerns over proposed guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is not fit for purpose and will harm trans people living in the UK.
The Code of Practice for services, public functions, and associations is the culmination of years of well-funded campaigns to drive a minority group out of British public life. It sets out a system of segregation where trans people are excluded from services and spaces that reflect their gender, and in some cases also excluded from services and spaces that reflect their sex assigned at birth. Where unisex facilities exist, trans people will be forced into them. Where they do not exist, trans people will be left with nowhere to go.
Your own Equalities Impact Assessment [1] on the code admits there will be a significant impact on those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment - from forcing trans people to out themselves by using disabled toilets to putting trans women at greater risk of sexual violence by making them use men's services.
The Code of Practice is both cruel and confusing. Inconsistencies between the Code of Practice and its Equalities Impact Assessment, the Gender Recognition Act and the European Convention on Human Rights will leave organisations and service providers at risk of litigation from all sides. Frontline staff in spaces like cafes, gyms, and offices will be forced to police gender, whilst the costs of creating self-contained gender neutral facilities are estimated by your advisors as reaching £600m, which the government is providing no funding to cover [2]. I am pleased to see associations, like the Women's Institute and Girlguiding, given a potential route to serving trans and cisgender women, but this does not counteract the pain caused by the majority of the guidance.

By enacting this guidance, trans people will simply be scapegoated. Research by Translucent found there was just one complaint to English Unitary Authorities in 2025 concerning trans women's use of single-sex spaces, such as toilets and changing rooms
[3]. By refusing to act, your government is once again playing politics with trans people's lives, rather than tackling real problems, like the soaring cost of living, rising inequality and the ongoing climate crisis.
Trans people of all ages and backgrounds exist in communities across the country - and always have. They have every right to thrive just as their cisgender friends, family members, and colleagues do. When Labour brought in the Gender Recognition Act in 2004 it promised trans people they could live their lives with peace, privacy, and dignity.
Now you are breaking that promise.
I believe there is a real risk of trans people being essentially segregated from public spaces. I urge you to withdraw the code and take legislative action to create an equalities framework that protects trans people's safety, dignity and humanity.
Yours sincerely,
Hannah
1 Equality impact assessment. EHRC, May 2026.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/equality-act-2010-draft-code-of-practice-for-services-public-
functions-and-associations-2026/equality impact-assessment
2 Final stage impact assessment, 9. Minimising administrative and compliance costs for preferred option. EHRC, May 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/equality-act-2010-draft-code-of-practice-for-services-
public-functions-and-associations-2026/final-stage-impact-assessment#minimising-administrative-and-
compliance-costs-for-preferred-option
3 Trans Women and Single-Sex Spaces: 2026 UK Council FOl Report. Translucent. June 2026.
https://translucent.org.uk/trans-women-and-single-sex-spaces-2026-uk-council-foi-report/

"We are delighted to say that our letter to the leaders and our elected representatives got a response, and that it was so timely! It's quite an in-depth response, and I don't think we can cover literally everything, but we're happy with the response we got.
We did get an explanation for Ellie being in the chamber but not speaking, in that it was a priority to go along and listen to the statement, but Ellie, like Hannah, had made a commitment to her constituents to attend another debate.
With this new context, we feel thankful for Ellie's attendance.
As liberation groups, we have been invited to engage and have dialogue with Greens in Parliament, and to have a closer working relationship, which can only ever be a good thing in helping ensure us Greens work tirelessly for liberation for all.
We're also aware of some current work behind-the-scenes, which Greens are leading on, but on an overabundance of caution, we won't go into detail about until it's made public.
It's hopeful to hear that so much work is going in to the opposition of the Code of Practice."

Apparently it was The Times who found the conspiracy theory posts shared by Chris Kennedy. Are we doing any vetting? We should assume any and all right wing outlets will dig for any crumb to attack the Green Party with, and something like this seems such an easy thing to catch. What can we do to improve vetting on a national level? How badly will this instance of failed vetting hurt the party’s performance / reputation?

With Andy Burnham walking back a lot of his more left-leaning policies, and falling closer in line with Starmer-ism, does it make sense to push a heavy campaign in the seat? There are already 60 Labour MPs calling for PR, would Labour see this defeat (either to Greens, or to Reform on a split center / left vote), as an even greater reason to call for proportional representation?

Given the massive biased smear campaign going into Thursday I was nervous, but overall feel like we made a lot of good progress and have a lot to celebrate! Curious how we did relative to original projections though. Thanks for any help! How are you feeling?

Reform seems to be picking up a lot of seats due to FPTP with slim margins. Do you think these results will pressure Labour into pursuing fairer and more representative voting methods?

The media has been on the attack on every little thing against the Greens. How do we recover from the onslaught of media smearing? Can Zack and the party recover the forward momentum?