Mick Hartley

Suzanne Moore – Why are left-wing women writing in right-wing newspapers? Short answer: because left-wing papers like the Guardian have decided to take onboard the whole misogynist gender ideology, with its accompanying censoriousness. 

Why is Julie Bindel, a life-long campaigner against violence against women, writing in the Mail? Why is Nina Power, author of One Dimensional Woman, writing for The Telegraph? Why is Janice Turner continuing to turn out brilliant columns for The Times? Why am I happy in my new berth at The Telegraph? I can’t speak for them, only myself.

Quite simply because I am allowed to say what I want.  

Why did a powerful rebuke of the level of threat against JK Rowling come from Alex Massie? Why does James Kirkup continue to mount a strong defence of the rights of girls and women in the in-house magazine of the Tory party, The Spectator?  Whatever your views on the whole trans issue, is it not incredibly mean and petty-minded to leave JK Rowling off their birthday list as The Guardian  just did?

When I was there and still bothering to talk to them, I always would say that if we don’t have the arguments, they would be had anyway, and we would be gifting the right a moral superiority in being able to say it was more open and somehow more feminist than the left. That is exactly what has happened.  

Their answer to me at the time was that The Guardian were not going to address the whole trans issue via comment, they would simply somehow neutrally report on it.  The Observer, before anyone asks, has a different editorial team and one that is prepared to have an actual discussion.

The result of all this is not just The Guardian disappearing up its own wazoo in a purity spiral but the loss of many women readers. You could say such women are a bunch of middle-aged Terfs who shouldn’t be allowed to read newspapers anyway.  You could say good riddance as the Labour Party appears to be doing to lifetime supporters who simply want to protect single-sex spaces. 

All of this is politically and commercially suicidal and reminds me of the haute Remain position, that all Leave voters were thick racists so they did not need speak to them.  

My crime, and the reason I left the paper, was to say that biology is real – this is what most people actually think -  and it is not transphobic to say so. Sorry, no repentance from me….