Not Automatically Recognised

The Government's plan to disapply Scottish Gender Recognition Certificates in the rest of the United Kingdom presupposes Royal Assent to the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. I told you on the day that that passed Holyrood that Westminster would do nothing to stop it, even though it could. And here we are.

Moreover, that disapplication will not require a Division of the House of Commons, which would have laid bare the complete fiction that a large number of Conservative MPs was against gender self-identification. There are probably not 20, and certainly not 50.

Even with a majority of 80, the Government could not have enacted legislation either to have overruled the new law in Scotland, or to have protected everywhere else from its consequences. Rishi Sunak himself would have been conveniently absent from that. Liz Truss's indulgence of opposition to gender self-identification was not the main or only factor in her removal, but it was undeniably in the mix. The partisan spread of the votes against it would be broadly in proportion to the composition of the House. The absolute number would be tiny.

By the way, if Reform has any position on this issue, then no one can find it. As ardent Thatcherites, Richard Tice and his supporters are no doubt all in favour of literally self-made women and of literally self-made men. It is just that they are not yet confident enough to say so to their target voters. But the signal will be sent to them soon enough.

From The Guardian to the Daily Telegraph, I defy anyone from abroad, who would not be able to do so by style rather than by substance, to tell the media of the liberal Right apart in a blind test. They all print what their corporate advertisers will pay for, based on what those corporations' market research has told them that the liberal-capitalist bourgeoisie wanted to read.

The first of those has in fact led the change on this issue, which is why that change has happened entirely under a Conservative Government, while the second has accordingly been changing so far and for so long that that can no longer be ignored. To the public sector and its vast network of contractors, gender self-identification is for all practical purposes already the law throughout the United Kingdom. That was not the case before 2015.

It is well-known that a number of up-and-coming commentators, with aspirations to Conservative seats, have been disaffected for some time with the editorial line on gender self-identification. That line is now shifting. As always with anything that might be termed social conservatism, it never did bear the slightest resemblance to the private life of almost any right-wing hack. Anyone who doubts that has never met them. Those newspapers' next big project is to restore the office of Prime Minister to the husband of Carrie "Stonewall" Johnson.

Boris Johnson's reliable outrider, Michael Fabricant, has already called for the Gender Recognition Reform Bill to be extended throughout the United Kingdom. The question of gender self-identification would not even arise in a debate between Johnson and Keir Starmer. Or between Starmer and Sunak, come to that.

But we are heading for 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.