Mick Hartley

Janice Turner in the Times:

The moment the Cass report was published the Overton window lurched: everything Tavistock whistleblowers and journalists had been ostracised for saying was suddenly mainstream.

It’s tempting to list the cowards, fools, liberal sheep, airhead celebrities who shilled for Mermaids; atheists, humanists, blow-hard podcasters and “fearless” radio stars, right-on male comics who relished the chance to scream at women and spineless Labour politicians, all now claiming that Cass is what they believed all along.

I’ll allow myself the luxury of two names. First Ed Miliband, who in November 2017 devoted his Reasons to be Cheerful podcast to trans issues. Not only did he scorn all opponents of self-ID as “bonkers” but he invited on Dr Helen Webberley, the child hormone-prescribing doctor who ran a private clinic with her husband (who has been struck off the medical register).

I wrote to Miliband privately, linking to articles explaining the effect of her drug regime. “Of course I don’t believe in sterilising children!” thundered this condescending know-all.

The second is Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green, desperate to deep-clean her reputation post-Cass. “I’ve always been deeply concerned,” she said last week, “about the internalised homophobia that is going on for young women that means they think they can’t be a dyke, and they’ve got to be a boy.”

I met Hunt for lunch in 2019 just as she was leaving Stonewall, where she was chief executive. Hunt is slippery smart. At the end, I implored her as a butch lesbian who loves men’s tailoring to make a speech saying that you can look how you like and still be a woman. “It would be so powerful,” I said.

But she never did: because it would have enraged the trans lobby on whose campaign funds she depended. Hunt is a Christian who must know the ninth commandment, so I hope she’s squared her duplicity with God.

There's a Change petition to Strip Ruth Hunt of her peerage for her role in the gender medical scandal.

Stonewall’s irresponsible, deceitful and self-interested behaviour – it went on to offer ‘trans-inclusive courses’ for schools, at a fee – has caused untold havoc. We believe its chief executive at the time, Ruth Hunt, should take responsibility for her charity’s deeply damaging conduct, which played a key role in the scandal now unfolding. It is deeply insulting to the families she has harmed that, instead, Hunt was awarded a peerage and now sits in the House of Lords as Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green, a legislator-for-life.

See also Malcolm Clark at Spiked: How Ruth Hunt turned trans into a religious crusade – and is now trying to dodge responsibility for her role in the ‘trans kids’ scandal.