Glasgow council leader Susan Aitken has publicly criticised the EHRC's draft guidance on single-sex spaces as contradictory and unworkable, and told the city's LGBT community that Glasgow has their back. That combination, naming the problem plainly and refusing to abandon the people affected, is rarer than it should be right now.

What Susan Aitken actually said

At last week's full council meeting, councillor Declan Blench asked Aitken to reaffirm the council's commitment to trans people and the wider LGBT community, pointing out that the UK ranks 22nd out of 49 European countries for LGBTQIA+ equality. Aitken did not hedge. She said that hate crime against LGBT people is rising, that Police Scotland is recording the increase, and that Glasgow would take the opportunity to say plainly: "They are welcome here, they are supported, and this city will have your back."

She had already gone further than that. On the EHRC's draft code of practice, which states that single-sex spaces including changing rooms and toilets must be used on the basis of biological sex, and that a trans woman cannot use female toilets, Aitken was direct. She agreed with trans organisations that the guidance is "often contradictory and confusing, providing no clear advice on how services can include trans people." Then she said what good guidance would look like: clear, consistent, workable in practice, supportive of inclusion, and protective of the rights and dignity of everyone affected. And she said, without softening it, that she does not believe the current guidance does that.

That is not a small thing to say from the leader of Scotland's largest council. It is the kind of plainness that is in short supply.

What it looks like when a politician stands firm

I have watched a lot of politicians discuss trans rights over the past few years, and I have become familiar with a particular kind of non-answer. It usually involves acknowledging that trans people deserve respect, immediately followed by a "but" that does most of the work, followed by a conclusion that sounds like balance but lands as abandonment. The triangulation is almost always presented as thoughtfulness.

What Aitken did is different. She identified a specific piece of guidance. She named what is wrong with it, using the same language trans organisations have used. She did not add a "but" about the need to balance competing rights. She did not suggest the guidance raises difficult questions that deserve careful consideration. She said it does not work, and she said so at a full council meeting, on the record.

Then she said her city has trans people's backs.

That is what it looks like when a politician stands firm rather than triangulates, and it is genuinely unusual enough to be worth noticing.

The EHRC guidance, and what it is actually doing

The draft code of practice that Aitken was responding to came out of the Supreme Court's ruling that the definition of a woman in the Equality Act should be interpreted as biological sex. The EHRC guidance that followed has been widely criticised, including by legal experts, for being confusing and internally inconsistent. Trans organisations have said it offers public bodies no workable path to inclusion. Aitken is not alone in that assessment: she is repeating what many people delivering front-line services have already discovered when they tried to apply the guidance in practice.

The Equality Act 2010 is still the law. The Supreme Court's ruling is one court's interpretation of that Act, and interpretations can be wrong, can be challenged, and are not the same thing as the statute itself. What the EHRC guidance has done, in its current form, is add a layer of anxiety on top of an already anxious situation, without giving anyone much clarity about what they are actually required to do. The people who pay the price for that confusion are not abstract categories in a legal argument: they are trans people trying to use a changing room, a swimming pool, a library.

Hate crime is going up, not down

Aitken's reference to rising hate crime is not a rhetorical flourish. Police Scotland is recording the increase. It matters that she named it in the same breath as the guidance, because the connection is real. When public institutions publish documents that question where trans people can stand, sit, or change their clothes, it does not stay inside those institutions. It feeds a broader permission structure. Trans people feel that. The numbers show it.

Saying "this city has your back" in that context is not empty reassurance. It is a council leader putting her name to a different kind of signal, one that says: whatever is happening at the national level, this is not what we are doing here.

What this means for trans people elsewhere

The update angle I was asked to consider is what trans people in other cities can now reasonably expect, and what it says about the gap between local leadership and national hesitancy.

The honest answer is that Glasgow cannot change the law, override the EHRC's guidance, or shield trans people from every consequence of what is happening nationally. What it can do is control how its own services are run, how its staff are trained, how loudly it speaks when guidance runs the other way, and how willing it is to go no further than statute requires rather than racing ahead of it to pre-emptive exclusion.

That is not nothing. A council that has said publicly, on the record, that trans people are welcome and supported, is a council whose trans residents have a basis on which to push back if services start going the other way. It is also a council that has made a political choice visible enough to be held to.

What I would like to see is more of it. Not as a substitute for national action, but as a demonstration that the triangulation we see so often elsewhere is a choice, not an inevitability. Susan Aitken made a different choice. She named what was wrong, said who it was hurting, and put the city's name behind the people being hurt.

More politicians could do that. The question is whether they will.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, writer, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP.