Rishi Sunak hits 'rock bottom' with trans joke in front of Brianna Ghey's mother

Rishi Sunak is facing criticism after making a joke about the “definition of a woman” in the Commons, as the mother of murdered trans teenager Brianna Ghey visited parliament.

Social media users accused the prime minister of hitting 'rock bottom' with the jibe aimed at Keir Starmer during a comment on the trans debate.

Esther Ghey was due to appear in the public gallery and just four days after her 16-year-old daughter’s killers were jailed for life.

Plenty have called on Sunak to apologise but his actions were defended by Downing St.

It came when Sunak hit out at Starmer and claimed he had broken promises on “pensions, planning, peerages” before saying the Labour leader had U-turned on “defining a woman, although, in fairness, that was only 99 per cent of a u-turn”.

The comments referenced Starmer’s previous comments that “99.9 per cent of women do not have penises”.

Starmer criticised Sunak by saying: “Of all the weeks to say that, when Brianna’s mother is in this chamber. Shame.”

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The Labour leader added that the PM was “parading as a man of integrity when he has got absolutely no responsibility”, while shouts of “shame” rang out from the backbenches.

He went on to say: “I think the role of the prime minister is to make sure that every single citizen in this country feels safe and respected, and it’s a shame the prime minister doesn’t share that”.

It later transpired that Brianna’s mother was not actually in the Commons chamber when Mr Starmer and Mr Sunak crossed swords but arrived soon afterwards. Both had been under the impression that Brianna’s mother was watching.

Despite the Labour leader’s comments - and a request from Labour MP Liz Twist to apologise - the PM did not offer an apology for his comments.

Sunak later addressed Ms Ghey’s presence but didn’t apologise. He said: “Also to Brianna Ghey’s mum, who is here, as I said earlier this week, what happened was an unspeakable and shocking tragedy. In the face of that, for her mother to demonstrate the compassion and empathy that she did last weekend, I thought demonstrated the very best of humanity in the face of seeing the very worst of humanity, and she deserves all our admiration and praise for that.”

Sunak has since been heavily criticised on social media since the exchange in the commons.

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