Mick Hartley

Should we be worried about the backlash to this week's Supreme Court ruling? The hysterical reaction of many trans activists was to be expected, and has done little to dispel the notion that they're just a bunch of spoiled man-childs (men-children?), but the sense that many Labour MPs are unhappy is more troubling. Joan Smith at UnHerd:

The backlash has begun. It’s happening up and down the country, where thousands of trans activists raged at the weekend against last week’s Supreme Court judgment. In London, they carried placards threatening to kill “terfs”, urinated on a statue of the suffragette, Millicent Fawcett, and daubed it with the slogan “fag rights”. In Sheffield, a small group of women had to be protected by police from an angry mob of trans activists.

But there’s also something going on behind the scenes. Yesterday’s Mail on Sunday has revealed that government ministers secretly condemned the ruling in a WhatsApp group and plotted to challenge it. Labour MPs specifically attacked Baroness Falkner, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is due to issue new guidance this summer on the court’s common-sense ruling that “sex” means biological sex.

Has Starmer stepped in to confront these gender rebels? He has not. Has he issued any statement yet on the ruling? He has not. Are we surprised? We are not.

Trans people have not lost a single right in this country. What they don’t have — and never had, despite the claims of activists — is a right to be treated as biological women. The hysterical response to the judgment is a cry of pure fury, an echo of every time an entitled man has heard the word “no”. And that makes it an exceedingly dangerous moment for women.

As a former prosecutor, Starmer should know this perfectly well. The most dangerous moment in a woman’s life is when she stands up to an abusive man. Trans activists have nowhere to go except the streets, and some of them appear to be itching for a confrontation; it is clear that someone could get seriously hurt. The Prime Minister has, in the past, been quick to denounce public disorder, but the sight of women being shouted at by thugs with trans flags appears not to move him at all.

Refusing to speak is taking sides. Starmer has tolerated and enabled misogyny in the Labour party for far too long. His silence is no longer tenable.

You'd think it would be a good opportunity for Starmer to extract himself from the gender mess he got himself into and show some leadership…but no. The sound of silence.