Reform is at war over which prisons trans women offenders should be sent to – and in a particularly bizarre twist, it’s Anne Widdecombe of all people who seems to have upset the hardliners.
An unseemly row in the party was sparked by its new ‘prisons czar’, former governor Vanessa Frake, telling an interviewer she did not believe trans women should be automatically removed from women’s prisons and that placement should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Leader Nigel Farage initially seemed to back his new advisor, before rapidly reverse-feretting when it emerged it had caused fury among his base – particularly in Scotland, where local Reform members see it as a hot button issue ahead of next year’s Holyrood election. The party’s spokeswoman in Scotland, Claire Mackie-Brown, said: “We stand for common sense: only biological women belong in female prisons and women’s spaces – no ifs, or buts.”
After initially fudging his views, saying “I’ve personally never worked in a prison so I can’t answer it”, Farage seemed to back Frake, arguing: “In terms of the problems in prisons, it’s a relatively small one.” But as the scale of grassroots displeasure became clear the party quickly briefed hard that Frake’s views were not party pleasure.
That sparked an intervention by the party’s former justice spokeswoman, Widdecombe, who used on article on GB News’s website to argue that while “the norm should be that a prisoner should serve the sentence imposed in a prison of the sex that he was born in”, exceptions should be made for the “very small number of trans people who have gone the whole hog” – that it, undergone a full transition.
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“We have a duty to ensure their safety too, and beyond all peradventure, they would not be safe in a male prison but liable to serious sexual assault, including rape,” she wrote.
With Reform social media up in arms about their one-time spokeswoman’s surprising empathy, the party rolled out Sarah Pochin, the new Runcorn MP who has already appointed herself prisons minister were Reform to win the next general election, to set the record straight.
“I would like to clarify Reform’s policy on transgender prisoners serving time in a female prison,” she said in a video posted to X. “I can assure all of you that under a Reform government no biological male prisoner will ever serve time in a female prison.”
But for a certain sector of the party’s support the damage was already done. Comments posted on the video included “Too late… Reform are woke now”, “I’m a paid up Reform member + this is a red line for me”, “Have you spoken to Nigel about this – by all accounts he is not so sure?” and “Reform are a woke joke”.
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