The number of people applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) has reached a new record. Government figures revealed that there were 1,397 applications in 2023-24 and, of those, 1,088 were granted. Labour has vowed to simplify the process of changing gender, meaning that the numbers could rise further.
The opinion polls might be projecting a massive Labour majority, but there is a dynamic to this election that could yet derail Keir Starmer’s plans for government. Yesterday*, J.K. Rowling spoke for many women when she fired off a volley of tweets on sex and gender. Her frustration was palpable, but also notable was her defence of Kemi Badenoch.
If the country has not had enough sex by now, it may have by the election*. Political sex, that is – Rishi Sunak has clearly spotted an opportunity for a fully frontal attack on one of Labour’s weak spots. This morning, the Prime Minister promised that if re-elected, his government would rewrite the Equality Act to make it clear that sex means biological sex.
Anyone who thought the downfall of the Tory government might bring an end to the interminable debate over transgender rights should scrutinise Labour’s plans. It could be that the past seven years of political manoeuvrings was merely the warm-up act.
We are in dangerous times when adults who should know better allow student politicians to play the trans card so they can act with impunity. On campuses across the country, the pink and blue flag is being used to excuse the bullying and harassment of anyone who does not adhere to gender identity ideology, and its catechism, “trans women are women”.
The Tories may have taken self-identification of legal gender off the table, but the transgender thought police have certainly not gone away. Their latest victim is Kevin Price who, until last Thursday, was a Labour member of Cambridge City council, in a seat he had held for ten years.
August is the traditional silly season, but the Labour party risks descending into a farce from which it might struggle to recover when real politics resumes in September. In the absence of any direction from the party leadership, the transgender thought police have led the party down a rabbit hole. Last week, Spectator readers may recall the appalling attack on Rosie Duffield MP for claiming – quite rightly – that ‘only women have a cervix’. Now, the madness has continued.
It’s summer but the war on women continues. The latest person to fall victim to the transgender thought police is Labour MP Rosie Duffield after she liked a tweet by Piers Morgan where he harrumphed CNN’s reference to ‘individuals with a cervix’. Duffield later angered her critics more by asking: ‘I’m a ‘transphobe’ for knowing that only women have a cervix….?!’
Morgan is a man, of course, so he escaped censure. But Duffield was not so lucky. This modern witch hunt tends to target women, specifically those who have the audacity to reclaim the word ‘woman’ to describe their sex.
Debbie Hayton