This British MP just became the U.K.’s first openly trans member of Parliament

Editor’s Note: At the time of writing, Jamie Wallis has stated he is still using he/him/his pronouns. This article will be updated if that changes.

Just hours before the Trans Day of Visibility, British MP Jamie Wallis made history by becoming the U.K.’s first member of parliament to come out as transgender.

“I’m trans. Or to be more accurate, I want to be,” wrote Wallis, who was first elected as a member of Parliament for Bridgend in 2019, in a March 30 statement posted to his website. “I’ve been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and I’ve felt this way since I was a very young child. … I always imagined I would leave politics well before I ever said this out loud.”

The statement also detailed a variety of traumatic events that happened to Wallis over the past two years, including sexual assault, PTSD, a car accident and an attempt at blackmail that resulted in him being forcibly outed to his father.

Wallis clarified in a follow-up statement that he “will continue to present as I always have and will use he/him/his pronouns” for the time being.

Wallis’ announcement was met with support from across the political spectrum, including members of his own party. Prime Minister Boris Johnson applauded Wallis in a tweet, thanking him for his “bravery.” “The Conservative Party I lead will always give you, and everyone else, the love and support you need to be yourself,” Johnson wrote on March 30.

However, critics noted that Johnson’s words did not match his actions. As Politico reports, Johnson began a speech earlier that same day by saying: “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, or as [Labour party leader] Keir Starmer would put it, people who are assigned female or male at birth.”

Two days after Wallis’ historic coming out, leaked documents also revealed that Johnson had deserted the Conservative Party’s 2018 pledge to ban conversion therapy, according to The Independent. 

Wallis has never publicly spoken on trans issues before, and he has never voted on any piece of LGBTQ+ legislation, according to the Public Whip voting record. He has also never rebelled against parliament’s conservative majority in any vote, consistently voting against rights for asylum seekers, climate change prevention and reducing tax avoidance, per data from TheyWorkForYou. 

Since Wallis entered the House of Commons in 2019, the U.K. has become increasingly anti-trans, carrying on a long-standing trend that ramped up in earnest around 2017. The media, alongside politicians and anti-trans activist groups, have consistently framed trans people as a threat to women’s rights while denying the country’s systemic transphobia.

In order to receive hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to treat gender dysphoria through the publicly-funded National Healthcare System (NHS), trans people have to have two appointments with doctors at segregated Gender Identity Clinics. Trans youth face huge delays for the one publicly-funded gender clinic, which was further delayed by a court ruling that paused all care for trans youth under the age of 16 for a period of 10 months. 

The largest clinic in the U.K. currently has a waitlist of 10,000 people.

U.K. law also does not officially recognize trans people as their correct gender unless they get a Gender Recognition Certificate, meaning trans people have to go through a long, bureaucratic process not to be misgendered on marriage records or death certificates. Plans to simplify the process by allowing trans people to self-identify their gender were scrapped in 2020, and the current government has also rejected a petition calling for non-binary identities to be legally recognized.

Although there has never been an openly trans MP in the U.K. before, the House of Commons had 45 openly LGBTQ+ members after the 2019 election. There have been four trans local councillors (Jenny Bailey, Sarah Brown, Anwen Muston and Sarah Fanet) and one trans member of European Parliament (Nikki Sinclaire). 

Wallis is unsure of what the future holds but acknowledged the importance of his historic coming out. “I have never lived my truth and I’m not sure how,” he said. “Perhaps it starts with telling everyone.”