Tony Blair says 'a woman has a vagina and a man has a penis' as he takes aim at politicians in a 'muddle' over 'common sense' transgender issues in veiled swipe at Keir Starmer

Sir Tony Blair has questioned why politicians are in a 'muddle' over transgender issues and stated: 'A woman is with a vagina and a man is with a penis.'

The ex-prime minister called for 'common sense' to be applied, and said he found it 'weird' that 'people have ended up in this extraordinarily polarised debate'.

Ahead of the general election on 4 July, both the Conservatives and Labour have promised to overhaul legislation related to transgender rights.

The Tories have pledged to rewrite the Equality Act to make clear that 'sex means biological sex'.

And Labour want to 'modernise, simplify, and reform' the process by which people can legally acquire a new gender, while keeping protections for single-sex spaces.

In an apparent swipe at Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer - who once claimed it was 'not right' to say only women have a cervix - Sir Tony wondered why politicians found it 'hard' to define a woman.

Sir Keir sparked fresh confusion over his stance on gender identity last year when he suggested 1 in 1,000 women have male genitalia, saying that 99.9 per cent of women 'of course haven't got a penis'.

Sir Tony told Holyrood magazine: 'I don't know how politics got itself into this muddle.

'What is a woman? Well, it's not a very hard thing for me to answer really.

'I'm definitely of the school that says, biologically, a woman is with a vagina and a man is with a penis. I think we can say that quite clearly.'

The former Labour premier also warned women should not be prevented from 'talking about being biological women'.

'The point is this: if people want to reassign their gender and say, 'ok I may be born biologically a male but I want to reassign as female', that's absolutely fine and people should be entitled to do that.

'And there is no doubt at all there are people who genuinely feel that they are in the wrong body.'

He added: 'There are just three qualifications to it that I think are very important. Number one, it shouldn't stop women talking about being biological women.

'This idea that you can't refer to pregnant women, I think most people think that's completely ridiculous.

'Secondly, there may be situations, for example, where you have people who still have male genitalia but are in a changing room with women, and women will feel uncomfortable with that.

'They shouldn't feel uncomfortable, so you've got to protect that, and the issues in relation to sport and so on.

'And thirdly, you've got to be very careful with young people. Because if you're talking about young people at an impressionable young age, you've got to handle this with immense care.

'Because whereas there are people that may think that they're gay and then decide later that they're not, there's no physical change that they're engaged with, whereas in this, if you're giving people treatment which involves physical changes to them, that's such an enormously important, life-changing decision, you've got to exercise great care.

'So subject to those three qualifications, and I think that's where the overwhelming majority of people are, and honestly, I don't find it difficult.

'I've never thought that difficult, so it's a weird thing to me that people have ended up in this extraordinarily polarised debate in which, you know, the most important thing is to apply common sense.'