Lisa Nandy’s response to the trans issue might have lost her my vote. But not in the way you might think.

How politicians decide and execute their strategy is an under-appreciated element of politics. There is often discussion of the policies that candidates promote, but not enough of how they decide on their strategy or how they stick to it.

I was, and remain, undecided which of the two more moderate options to vote for the Labour leadership contest. Lisa Nandy’s response to the debate around trans and gender has made me less likely to vote for her in the race to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Opposition. It is not the position she has taken, not the policy, but how it has been arrived at and what it tells us about her ability to be the main opposition party’s candidate to be Prime Minister.

Lisa Nandy has given an interview in which she has advocated having accommodation within prisons for trans women — biological males who identify as women. This comes in response to questions she has been asked about whether a biologically male rapist of biological females should be imprisoned with biological females if the rapist identifies as a woman. Nandy believes that a “a person who self-identifies as a woman” has “a right to be accommodated in a woman’s prison”. I take no position on her belief or the merits of the policy, rather I am concerned with how she arrived at it.

I wonder when she decided to support the costly-sounding construction of a new section of prisons in order to accommodate an additional classification of prisoner — trans women. That, I believe, is the implication of her support for accommodating a biological male rapist around biological females. Again, it is not the merits of that policy that concern me here, but the workings that underpin it.

I don’t believe that Nandy would have started this leadership race wanting to make this seemingly expensive and difficult commitment. I do not see that she had decided to make it a central feature of her campaign when it kicked off. In which case it is a reactive policy, and a controversial one. It is this which concerns me in the writing of this piece and worries me about her ability as leader.

If indeed it is a reactive policy, I fear she has demonstrated strategic ill-discipline. She may have been pulled into this position in order to appease a vocal group, signing a pledge to expel from the Labour party those with a particular opinion, though she claimed the call for expulsion gave her “pause for thought” before signing the pledge and doesn’t agree with all of it.

All this matters because anyone who has been involved in any project will know things start to go wrong, or less well than they should, once mission creep begins. A project, like a policy, should be limited and clear in its aims. My worry is that Nandy has reacted to an event and committed herself to something controversial and costly without fully considering the implications. Even if she has fully considered the implications, I worry about her getting blown off course. A subsequent interview, in which she speaks out against the pledge that she signed, seems to indicate confused thinking and a desire to have her cake and eat it. Again, this is not to debate or discuss the merits of the policy, but rather the thinking behind her response it.

A politician, especially a leader, can’t react to every event and certainly not by promising costly interventions. Money is tight, especially at the moment. Leaders have to pick and choose carefully what they commit to, prioritising whether they do this rather than that. My concern is that Nandy has not done so, she has reacted to an event and overcommitted in pursuit of tactical advantage at the expense of strategic position. She has committed to something that sounds expensive which would probably not have been one of her strategic priorities at the start. That worries me. Especially when up against someone with such excellent strategic ability as Dominic Cummings.

Kier Starmer’s position on the issue? I have no idea. And that may be a good thing. It means he hasn’t committed himself to something and has stayed true to his strategy, dull though that is. This issue matters because politicians face being blown off course my events all the time. There is too much focus on the policies candidates start the campaign with. There should be more consideration of where they end up.

The debates around trans and gender have placed a premium on language. I have at all times attempted to maintain a strictly scientific, factual and neutral approach to the language around this emotive issue. If I have failed in that I apologise.

EDIT

Something else recently made me think about this. Nandy has written a piece in The Independent arguing that “Labour hasn’t been listening to what people are trying to tell us”. She adds that

“As immigration climbed up the list of voters’ priorities, there was a shallowness of understanding in our analysis and a lack of courage in our response. We need to understand why, in areas with low immigration, people are concerned about it.”

She further adds that “Voters weren’t irrational or racist, but our political strategy treated them like they were.”

All of the above quotes seem to be leading Nandy towards being more open to voters’ concerns about immigration, potentially offering a point of difference with Sir Keir Starmer, who led Labour’s opposition to Brexit as a fervent Remainer. Instead, Nandy’s solution is “making a more principled and braver case for the last 20 years.” Which seems to be to accept voters concerns on immigration, before being braver in telling them they are wrong. This again raises questions about her strategic discipline and clarity of thinking and messaging.