Identity Politics

Those who decry the supposed dearth of women in the Cabinet have not asked the gender identity of Ben Wallace or Nadhim Zahawi.

The seven SNP rebels against gender self-identification are in favour of Scottish independence, so, like Joanna Cherry or the Alba Party, do not vote for them, any more than for Alison Teal, who is a Green. More broadly, Green support for things like a wealth tax and a £15 minimum wage risks leading people into anti-industrial Malthusianism. We need to reclaim our ground. You cannot be a "Red-Green".

Keir Starmer's Pabloism may disturb those of us who are Red-Red, although we have always known about it, but it is only the theoretical systematisation of mainstream middle-class opinion in Britain today. There is no point in pretending that it would strike the residents of Acacia Avenue as anything other than "moderate" and "centrist", if rather highfalutin in its articulation of what was "just common sense".

Eddie Izzard's campaign video is Starmerite boilerplate, so oppose him on that. It is more than enough. He is in favour of gender self-identification, and that is sufficient reason to vote against him, but when has he ever claimed to be a woman? Not to be "based in girl mode", but the words, "I am a woman"? Labour does not have an all-women shortlist at Sheffield Central, and indeed appears to have abandoned the practice, since its aim, that half of Labour MPs should be women, was attained and exceeded at the last General Election.

Not that that should ever have been an aim. At least primarily, equality and diversity should mean economic equality and class diversity, regional equality and regional diversity, the equal sovereignty of diverse states, and equal respect for diverse opinions within a framework of free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law with the presumption of innocence, requiring that conviction be beyond reasonable doubt.

Social solidarity is an expression of personal responsibility, personal responsibility is protected by social solidarity, international solidarity is an expression of national sovereignty, and national sovereignty is protected by international solidarity. We who hold these views have never not been cancelled, so we need no lectures on cancel culture from those who have always silenced us but who now bellow that they themselves are being silenced.

Izzard used to say that, "They are not women's clothes, they are my clothes, I bought them." Who could have argued with that? Yet now he calls himself "she". He does not do so as a harmless quirk. To be polite or compassionate, some of us might have indulged that. Male transvestism is one of the most venerable of British, and especially English, eccentricities. But Izzard is using feminine pronouns as a pretext for accessing women's single-sex facilities. Therefore, and however regretfully, we do have to insist against it.

On anything other than gender self-identification, if there is any political difference between Izzard and Rosie Duffield, then she is well to his right. Is the SDP really going to stand aside for a fervently pro-EU MP anywhere, but perhaps especially in Kent? She is an ally, but not even to the extent that Cherry is. She wants Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Copper, and Wes Streeting to become Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, and Health Secretary. On the gender issue alone, there are those who would vote even for Kemi Badenoch. But they are wrong, and not only because she shows no sign of doing, rather than saying, anything about that issue.

None of that is to deny the sheer physical courage that it now takes to state the fact of biological sex. The trouble around the recent appearance of Dr Helen Joyce at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge should be seen in terms of the fact that the Master, Professor Pippa Rogerson, took her BA in 1983, meaning that she cannot be younger than 60, and after a brief stint at Clifford Chase she has been a Cambridge don for 33 years. She is fortunate that gangs of young men in balaclavas and weighted gloves, which are essentially knuckledusters, have hitherto been quite outwith her experience. Yet such now attend any event featuring an opponent of transgender ideology. Middle-aged women are surrounded by them, followed from the venue by them, and so on. Professor Rogerson is terrified.

A quarter of a century ago, I arrived at a university college that was in a similar state. The previous Head of House had been driven from office and even from the country on entirely false grounds, notably that there was no such institution as the University of Philadelphia, which has since merged into another institution, but which most certainly did exist at the time. During his tenure, the faction in control of the Junior Common Room had, among other things, thrown a brick through the window of his home and then demanded that he apologise. The successor administration of, like him, academic clerics lived in fear, although that did lead it to lash out at peripheral figures far from student power. And those academics were men, frighteningly younger than I am now. They were not 60-year-old women.

As Maya Forstater says, "Sex is a biological fact, and is immutable. There are two sexes, male and female. Men and boys are male. Women and girls are female. It is impossible to change sex. These were until very recently understood as basic facts of life by almost everyone." Do not vote for any parliamentary candidate who did not say that, or the Leader of whose party did not say it. If they will lie about something as fundamental and as obvious as this, then they would lie about anything. This motion needs to be tabled in the House of Commons, and put to a division of the whole House: "Sex is a biological fact, and is immutable. There are two sexes, male and female. Men and boys are male. Women and girls are female. It is impossible to change sex." Do not vote for anyone who, being an MP, had not voted for that, or the Leader of whose party, being an MP, had not done so.

Starmer versus Liz Truss could have resulted in a Labour overall majority, but Starmer versus Rishi Sunak will result in a hung Parliament. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.