No Smear Here

An anti-vaxxer would be considered intellectually unfit to be Prime Minister, and perhaps also morally unfit. As would anyone who did not only question the policy response to climate change, as many of us do in the most vociferous terms, but who denied that the phenomenon existed at all. The same is true of someone who refuses to acknowledge that while a person without a cervix might be a woman, any person with a cervix must be a woman.

Therefore, we now know that Keir Starmer is intellectually unfit to be Prime Minister, and perhaps also morally unfit. Anyone who stood as a Labour candidate at the next General Election would at least be pretending to believe that Starmer ought to be raised to that office, and would therefore be equally unworthy of support.

We do not, however, know whether or not Boris Johnson is unfit on those grounds. He has never been asked. The Conservative Party never is asked the culture war questions. In the absence of the slightest evidence, and indeed in the presence of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, its representatives are assumed to hold views that in fact they almost never even claim to hold.

The media types who let them off almost never hold those views, either. Say what you like about The Guardian, and I certainly do, but the people who write its opinion pieces truly believe what they are saying. With extremely rare exceptions, the people who write the opinion pieces in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail cheerfully do not believe a word of it in private.

We already have the Government under which the entire concept of gender self-identification has emerged. No one had heard of it on the last day of Gordon Brown's Premiership, and very few on the last day of Nick Clegg's Deputy Premiership. Yet today, it is a fact of life across the entire public sector and for everyone who does business with the State. Without anything so vulgar as a parliamentary vote, of course.

Does Boris Johnson accept that anyone with a cervix must be a woman? Does Richard Holden? Neither of them has ever been asked. I do. Anyone with a cervix must be a woman, say I. If you are here in North West Durham and you want an MP like that, then please vote for me. If you are anywhere and you want there to be at least one MP like that, then please give any assistance that you can, by contacting davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.