Protection Command?

Until Keir Starmer's opportunistic intervention yesterday, the Government had been planning only to disapply Scottish Gender Recognition Certificates in the rest of the United Kingdom. Alister Jack still says explicitly that he would consider a rewritten Gender Recognition Reform Bill. It would be quicker to count the opponents than the supporters of gender self-identification in the Cabinet. The right-wing papers are also 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.

The Conservative and Labour frontbenches at Westminster and Holyrood, where a Conservative free vote saw two frontbenchers and a former Leader vote in favour, will come up with a "compromise" such as Starmer had outlined, and present that as the "sensible" option, by and for "the adults in the room". As such, it would obviously 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. Yet we would stand more chance than they would of being visited by Prevent, which is itself based on a proven hoax, and by the good, old-fashioned, armed likes of David Carrick and Wayne Couzens, still including those who had given them their nicknames. Under the Conservatives, those visits have already been happening for years. By the way, if there are any Police Officers even more carefully vetted than those of the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command, then they are the ones such as never noticed Prince Harry's cannabis, cocaine or magic mushrooms.

But Starmer's dishonesty is becoming a story. He lied to his party members to get their votes, so he would lie to anyone else to get their votes. 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.