Mick Hartley

The latest cancellation:

A peer has been disinvited from a university debating society over her support for a transgender joke made by Ricky Gervais.

Baroness Claire Fox, the founder of the Institute of Ideas free speech think tank, was invited to Royal Holloway, University of London, to speak to students about the importance of discussion.

Ooh the irony.

But the university’s debating society claimed it was “strong armed” and “bullied” into cancelling the talk by Royal Holloway’s students’ union (RHSU)….

In an email seen by The Telegraph, Maia Jarvis, RHSU’s president, flagged to the society how “Claire Fox re-tweets and praises this video of Ricky Gervais being overtly transphobic”.

The tweet she cited was a 60-second clip of a stand-up routine, in which the comedian joked about “the old fashioned women, you know, the ones with wombs” and “the new ones we’ve been seeing lately with beards and c—-”.

That's "cocks", by the way – not the other four-letter c word.

Baroness Fox, a non-affiliated life peer, had tweeted her support for how the video “skewered … trans-identity ideology”, adding: “I laughed. Kudos to @rickygervais for this.”

Ms Jarvis added in her email to the society: “I wonder if you have thought about the impact of bringing a person who is an advocate for hate towards trans people and publicly ridicules them.”

Six other student societies also wrote to students’ union chiefs demanding the Feb 23 talk be cancelled because of “transphobic views”.

It prompted Adam Ryan-Self, the debating society president, to axe the event because of “repeated attempts from the Students’ Union to cancel the event”, hitting out at officials “censoring those that do not align with their [often Left] ideology”.

Mr Ryan-Self told Baroness Fox: “After back and forth with the SU, it seems that they will find any way to make your visit onto campus an issue of student safety and wellbeing. I see it as nothing less than bullying.”

Standing up to the bullying doesn't seem to feature as an option.

Royal Holloway students’ union said societies were “given as much autonomy and freedom to operate as possible” but “the health and wellbeing of our members is our first priority at all times”.

A spokesman added: “We are supportive of the decision to cancel the event in order to safeguard our transgender community, and will always seek to protect the safety of marginalised people on campus.”

Yet again we are left wondering what exactly is so threatening about a debate on free speech. There's no indication that Claire Fox was planning to talk about the trans issue, or reproduce that Ricky Gervais routine. And this at a university, which is supposed to encourage debate, and challenge preconceptions…