A section 35 order on a technicality, with the explicit promise to consider a different Gender Recognition Reform Bill if Nicola Sturgeon had rewritten the details. Nothing on the principle of gender self-identification, which the entire public sector and its vast network of contractors have been applying as the law throughout the United Kingdom for half a decade, under a Conservative Government. Alister Jack would not even have done this if Keir Starmer had not engaged in a characteristic act of opportunism yesterday.
Although she is pushing at an open door, Penny Mordaunt's order to the Church of England to introduce same-sex marriage if it wanted to keep its seats in the House of Lords, or to have any role in Coronations after the one that it was too late to rearrange, is a reminder that she is still there. Unlike, say, Kemi Badenoch, she will still be there after the next Cabinet reshuffle, too.
Someone, possibly Joanna Cherry and the two Alba MPs, needs to table the motion that, "This House welcomes His Majesty's Government's rejection of the principle of gender self-identification by its section 35 order against the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill." They really would be squirming then. As they should be.
Yes, when I was watching Starmer yesterday, you'll have been in church for the rest of us, I knew he was giving the green light to a section 35 order because the nuts and bolts weren't right. Sturgeon is making a fuss but the Bill will be fiddled with, brought back and passed. Who's against it, Tory MPs? Telegraph and Mail readers thought those were all Eurosceptics until hardly any of them campaigned for Leave and they made Theresa May PM without a vote.
ReplyDeleteThe Mail and the Telegraph are shifting on this, in line with corporate advertiser requirements, Middle English opinion, and the views of rising contributors. Of course, those three are intimately connected.
DeleteAlister Jack says explicitly that he would consider a rewritten Bill. To suit Starmer's opportunistic objections, no doubt. Anyone would think that they had cooked it up together.
The Scottish Tories had a free vote on this, two of their frontbenchers and their former Leader voted for it, as you say there are supporters of self ID in the UK Cabinet.
ReplyDeleteIt would be quicker to count the opponents.
DeleteThe Conservative and Labour frontbenches at Westminster and Holyrood will come up with a "compromise" such as Keir Starmer had already outlined, and present it as the "sensible" option by and for "the adults in the room". As such, it would of course have to be given effect throughout the United Kingdom.
Those of us who did not want adult male genitalia in little girls' changing rooms would thus be placed at "the opposite extreme" to those who would castrate five-year-olds. But we would stand more chance than they would of being visited by the likes of Prevent, as has already been happening, under the Conservatives, for years.