Cultural Sensitivities?

You call this a culture war? If there really were one, then the Secretary of State for Health would have stopped the appeal against the original ruling in favour of Keira Bell, not least because the Prime Minister would have made him.

But instead, we have yesterday's ruling by the Court of Appeal that puberty blockers were controversial at the moment, but so was 12-year-olds having sex in 1985, and almost no one would think like that now. The ruling almost uses those words. That, pretty much, is now the law.

Where is the primary legislation to ban puberty blockers and to abolish Thatcher competence, which ought to be named after the woman who fought to impose it, not the woman who fought to stop it? I have never met Victoria Gillick, but I have once had a telephone conversation with her, so long ago that her reaction to a mention of the Conservative Party was, "I spent 18 years fighting against them."

For as long as I can remember, pro-life material has used terms such as, "Margaret Thatcher and her anti-life and anti-family policies." Although it rarely mentions her now, with the emphasis, like all other sound people's, having shifted to the baleful legacy of Tony Blair. He has been gone a long time, though. How many of yesterday's judges were appointed to the Court of Appeal before 2010?

Likewise, the Government that fought Mrs Gillick to the bitter end, establishing in law that 12-year-olds could have sex and can therefore also now be given puberty blockers, was not only a Conservative Government, but that Conservative Government, headed not only by a Conservative Prime Minister, but by that Conservative Prime Minister.

And that is why neither this nor any other Conservative, or New Labour, Government is ever going to do anything about it. You call this a culture war?