Mick Hartley

A useful summation of where we are, from Akua Reindorf in the Times:

The Supreme Court typically addresses cases of general public importance that contain the knottiest unresolved points of legal analysis. It is a measure of just how messy things had become in 2024 that the court agreed to answer a question about which nobody has ever had the slightest doubt: what is a woman?

Even for grizzled veterans of the gender wars, it was surreal that the court needed to spell out that, for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, a woman is a person born female and not a person born male. More surreal still is the fact that, for ten months now, many employers and service providers have simply ignored the judgment and have continued to allow males to use women’s facilities.

What is not a surprise is that this widespread defiance of the law has been brought about by a campaign of disinformation waged by trans rights activists. It was just such a campaign that convinced employers and service providers they were legally obliged to allow trans people to use opposite-sex facilities in the first place. That false idea should have been laid to rest by the judgment in For Women Scotland. Instead, activists claimed that the judgment is “not yet law” until parliament passes the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s statutory code of practice.

Simultaneously, they tried to ensure the code would not see the light of day by launching ill-conceived attacks on the judgment. Since September the code has been gathering dust on the desk of Bridget Phillipson, the women and equalities minister.

Last Friday the High Court rejected the latest attempt to frustrate the process through a judicial review brought against the EHRC by the omnicause campaign group the Good Law Project. The High Court dismissed all the arguments deployed by GLP’s barristers against an interim update published by the EHRC last year. It also rejected the submissions made on behalf of Phillipson, who was an interested party in the case. Having stated that she was taking a neutral stance, her submissions were obviously aligned with those of GLP.

A letter sent by GLP to Phillipson on the same day demanded that she return the code to the EHRC to be rewritten, on the basis that it was now clearly “wrong about the law”. Nothing in the High Court’s judgment remotely resembled this egregious spin.

Depressingly, at least three MPs immediately went in to bat alongside GLP. It is likely that these backbench interventions will intensify the pressure on Phillipson. Earlier political leadership might have headed off these outcomes. Its absence has created the ideal conditions for this most toxic of the so-called culture wars to escalate.

In a tough competition, surely Phillipson is the most useless of all the Labour ministers. Scared of the trans lobby, or a true believer? Or both?