It’s 4pm, which means it’s the snap general election nominations deadline! Given there are at least three journalists I know of writing stories about trans candidates in the election, this post will be a not-so-exclusive reveal of who is openly standing as a trans or non-binary candidate.

The first thing to note is that, compared to the nine candidates who stood in 2017, this is a shorter list. There are several obvious reasons for this – firstly, there may be last-second candidates who have not made it on to the list yet and names often come out after the deadline. As predicted, two more candidates came to light after the initial publication of this post – taking the total number up to eight, close to the record of nine from 2017.

Secondly, there would have been more candidates but for various Brexit-related electoral manoeuvering not previously seen in a general election. Jasmine Sakura-Rose stood down in Caerphilly as part of the Remain Alliance, and the Brexit Party similarly had Rachel Warby and Jessica Swift lined up before the party decided to stand aside in Conservative-held seats.

And finally, there is the recent upsurge in unpleasantness in politics that particularly targets women, BAME and trans people. The Press Association have interviews with various candidates on this topic which is worth a read but I don’t believe it is any coincidence that there are yet again no BAME trans people or trans men appearing here.

In 2017, rather than perform any particular analysis of people’s chances (Which would have involved me pointing out my own campaign was hopeless) I simply listed the swing required and let people draw their own conclusion. But now that I am not only not a candidate but also not a member of any political party I can be a little more direct about the likelihood of a trans MP in Westminster on 13th December.

And it’s not looking great, but it’s better than it has been before.

Most of these seats are what party HQs like to call “development seats” but more resemble black-holes that will get little to no outside support and may struggle to retain their deposits. The one seat where bookmakers will even take your money and give you anything other than a fifty-to-one outside chance is Helen Belcher’s Chippenham seat, where at the time of writing the betting market has her down as a seven-to-four, or about a one-in-three chance of winning.

As is often the case in politics, her success is more likely to depend on how the Liberal Democrats perform overall in the campaign, but if you are going to stay up to watch any seat this is the one to keep an eye on.