On Wednesday night, ten thousand people filled OVO Arena Wembley for Trans Mission: A Solidarity Concert. It was a four-hour, star-studded declaration that trans people in this country are not alone – and that the hostility directed at them is not going unanswered. Olly Alexander, the Sugababes, Wolf Alice, Adam Lambert, Ian McKellen reading Shakespeare. A mother speaking about her daughter Alice, who is no longer alive, asking the crowd to dance for those who can no longer dance for themselves. A standing ovation that shook the building.

One politician was on that stage. Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party, received what was described as the warmest of welcomes. His speech was filmed, shared, and celebrated. His post-event tweet gathered nearly 144,000 views.

Ed Davey was also there that night.

You would not know it from anything the party put out.

No clip of his speech circulated. No statement from HQ the following morning. No briefing to PinkNews or Attitude before the event. No social media push. Nothing that would tell a trans Liberal Democrat member, let alone a journalist, let alone a trans person wondering which parties had their back, that their leader had stood on that stage and spoken.

I want to be clear about what I am and am not saying. I am not saying Ed was wrong to attend. He was absolutely right to be there. And this is not a criticism of Ed personally – he has shown repeatedly that he understands what is at stake for trans people and their families. This is a criticism of the party machine around him. What I am asking is why, when their leader stood on that stage, nobody in HQ seemed to think it mattered enough to make sure anyone knew about it.

That question sits inside a longer pattern, and it is one we need to talk about honestly.

When the Supreme Court ruled in April last year that “sex” in the Equality Act means biological sex, trans members of this party needed to hear from their leader. What they got was a statement from our equalities spokesperson* ( Editor’s note: see comment below – actually Ed Davey) describing the ruling as bringing “clarity,” and Ed saying it had resolved “confusion.” The Green Party called it what many trans people experienced it as: an attack. I heard from many fellow trans Lib Dems and their allies in the days that followed. Some felt abandoned by a party they had campaigned for and believed in. Others were questioning whether they could stay.

When the EHRC published interim guidance recommending trans women be excluded from women’s spaces, LGBT+ Lib Dems condemned it as homophobic and transphobic. Ed said nothing publicly. Again.

And then came the diversity quota episode, which was perhaps the most damaging of all. Conference voted, by a clear majority, to reject a motion that would have based internal diversity quotas on biological sex. Despite this, the party leadership changed the rules anyway, implementing almost exactly what Conference had rejected. Members resigned. The pieces that followed were some of the most raw this site has published – members addressing the leadership directly, questioning what the party stood for, and urging fellow trans members to stay even as they acknowledged the resignation letters were already arriving.

None of this is the record of a party with bad values on trans rights. Our 2024 manifesto commitments on gender recognition reform, the conversion therapy ban, non-binary legal recognition – these are genuinely progressive. The problem is not what we believe. It is the persistent gap between what we believe and what we are seen to do about it.

That gap has consequences. The Greens’ membership has tripled since Polanski became leader. In the Gorton and Denton by-election last month, they won on a platform that included vocal, unapologetic support for trans rights – and the gender-critical candidate lost their deposit. The political calculation that treating trans rights as something to be handled quietly protects us from somewhere is not being borne out by events. The people we are losing to the Greens are not being replaced by gender-critical switchers. They never will be. Our values and theirs are not compatible, and no amount of careful silence will change that.

I do not think this comes from bad faith. I think it comes from a nervousness about getting it wrong, about saying the wrong thing, about being pulled into a debate that feels toxic and unresolvable. I understand that nervousness. I also think it has become, in itself, a way of getting it wrong – repeatedly, visibly, and at exactly the moments when people needed us most.

Ed Davey was at Trans Mission. That is genuinely good news. But right now, the only record of it lives in the memories of the Lib Dem members and allies who were in that crowd and saw him with their own eyes. A party that attends a moment like this and then disappears from the story has not really shown up. It has just been present.

We can do better than this. We need to.

* Tanya Park is a Lib Dem County, Borough & Town councillor in Eastleigh, Hampshire and writes at A Just Society, a liberal policy project making the case for radical progressive policies grounded in liberal principles.