THE Mail on Sunday carried a report about Carrie Symonds allegedly stopping her seemingly permanent ‘fiancé’ Boris Johnson from ditching the so-called transgender ‘reforms’ (backed by his predecessor Theresa May) that were designed to make it easier for people to change their legal gender.
The Prime Minister had been expected to declare that the Government was abandoning moves to allow transgender people to change their birth certificates without a medical diagnosis. This welcome if belated restoration of sanity to a government that had appeared to be in the thrall of Stonewall and the trans lobby had been driven by Liz Truss, the Minister for Women and Equalities, in her determination to protect women’s spaces and privacy.
With the long-awaited update on the Government’s plans to review the Gender Recognition Act earlier this summer it was Truss who finally drew a line in the sand. And for a while things seemed to be changing for the better at the ideologically driven Equalities Office.
However Mr Johnson has come under pressure from the new active and vociferous cross-party LGBT+ grouping who are represented in greater numbers than ever before and plans to abandon this deeply regressive law ‘reform’ have been delayed. One ‘senior source’, the Mail on Sunday reports, said that many detect the hand of Carrie in this and is the reason why the PM has got cold feet. She has already used her Number Ten platform to propound her views on climate change and was alleged to have influenced a government decision on badger culling.
For Liz Truss, who has been fighting this ‘culture war’ within Whitehall to stop the rules being relaxed, this delay must come as a blow, as it does to us at TCW. Caroline ffiske warned in our pages that Truss had a tanker to turn at the Equalities Office. But it now looks as if her nemesis might be residing at Number Ten.
Whatever the facts of the matter in this particular case is this sort of influence by a Prime Ministerial spouse or partner acceptable or do we have to recognise it as simply inevitable? Discuss.
