Keeping schtum

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling on the woman question — in which five justices confirmed what every dog already knows — did more than clarify the law. It showed which MPs are guided by principle, and which are just fluent in fashionable bullshit. Broadly, reactions fell into four camps: the sly, the sliders, the silent, and the stupid.

The sly know exactly what the ruling means, and what it threatens. Dame Angela Eagle and Culture Minister Sir Chris Bryant are two such schemers who took to an LGBT Labour WhatsApp group to plot ways to subvert the judgment. Who knew constitutional sabotage was now planned via social media chat.

Then there are the sliders — those who hope that corrupted attention spans will mean that voters won’t remember the recent past. Foremost among these is Harriet Harman, the Equality Act’s godmother and chair of the broken Fawcett Society. After years of silence while women were hounded, smeared, and forced out of jobs for knowing that sex is real, Harman now concedes the ruling “correctly interprets the law” as she and other ministers of the time had intended it.

Integrity is standing by your words when they become politically inconvenient

She added that the Act “protects the rights of women while also respecting the rights of trans women.” Like a tent that’s somehow both waterproof and full of holes.

Harman’s disingenuous statement was echoed by Labour’s Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson. As the ripples of the ruling were making the news she spluttered out the line: “Labour has always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex”, a line she repeated in Tuesday’s parliamentary debate on the ruling. 

But that’s just not true. When grilled on the Today programme about which facilities “transwomen” should use, Phillipson clung to the court’s language like a safety blanket, dodging the glaringly obvious answer: they’re men, so they should use the men’s. Yet just last year she told Times Radio that people ought to be free to decide which loos and changing rooms to use based on their identity.

This cowardice has been too much for Kemi Badenoch. The leader of the opposition, who was fighting trans extremism while much of her own party flirted with it, last week wrote to the head of the Civil Service demanding an investigation into what she called a “false public statement.” JK Rowling pointed out Badenoch’s bravery, noting that she “remains the only UK political leader offering unequivocal solidarity to women defending their rights.” 

Meanwhile, when the “woman question” was put to Starmer, nearly a week after the judgment, he slithered away from his previous position that it was “wrong” to say that only women have a cervix, or that 99.9 per cent of women don’t have a penis. He explained to ITV West: “A woman is an adult female, and the court has made that absolutely clear. I actually welcome the judgment because I think it gives real clarity.” Had he been honest from the outset, clarity from the court about basic biology and human rights would not have been necessary. Tellingly, Starmer was not present when the ruling was discussed in the House of Commons on Tuesday; perhaps he still considers it a fringe women’s issue. 

But the largest camp, unsurprisingly, is the silent.

Self-identified “gobby feminist” Jess Phillips, who once backed changes that would’ve stripped women of their right to leave marriages if their husband obtained a gender recognition certificate, has lost her voice. Despite being the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women, she was also AWOL during the parliamentary discussion of For Women Scotland’s victory. Phillips is far from alone; cases of crippling laryngitis have spread across the house, afflicting many of those who previously proudly proclaimed that “transwomen are women.”

On the Tory benches, Alicia Kearns, who once scolded a gay MP for saying LGB rather than “LGBT”, took the opportunity to post about bin collections and Chinese espionage.

Then there’s Penny Mordaunt. In 2021, she stood at the Commons dispatch box and declared: “Trans men are men and trans women are women.” Last week? Not a peep. Perhaps she’s workshopping a new line for her next leadership bid — if she ever manages to get back her seat.

Oddly, it’s the backbench left who’ve offered the most honest responses, and these largely fall into the category of “stupid.” Ghost of socialism past Jeremy Corbyn emerged from his allotment warning of “vitriol and hatred” toward the trans community. His old comrade, John McDonnell, claimed the ruling lacked “humanity.” Because, of course, nothing says humane quite like putting male sex offenders in women’s prisons. North of the border Maggie Chapman is clinging onto her suddenly fringe beliefs with swivel-eyed fanaticism. She has slammed the entire judiciary as a cesspit of bigotry, and has received official complaints in response.

Though surely, the figurehead for political shrieking stupidity in England must be Nadia Whittome. The member for Nottingham East serves not only as an example of where ambition unburdened by ability can take a sufficiently driven dimwit in British politics but also as reliable signpost toward the mental. On hearing the ruling she said, with touching conviction: “Today and every day, I stand in unwavering solidarity with the trans community. We must never stop fighting for trans rights.”

Whittome might be wrong — gloriously, tenaciously wrong — but she’s wrong with gusto. And that, really, is the point.

This ruling didn’t just clarify the law. It revealed the best of wrong and the worst of the right. The reactions have shown cowardice, hypocrisy, and moral vacuum behind so much of Westminster’s posturing. Politicians who once shouted “Trans women are women!” from the rooftops are now whispering from behind their hands, or keeping schtum. With the notable exception of the far left fringes, their conviction to the trans rights cause turned out to have the half-life of a trending hashtag.

Integrity is not marching at Pride. It’s not wearing a rainbow lanyard or slapping pronouns in your bio. Integrity is standing by your words when they become politically inconvenient. Last week’s ruling has made it clear how few in Parliament possess it.