Three reasons the fight for common sense women's rights isn't over yet

OPINION

Those of us who cracked open the Champagne last week after the rare outbreak of common sense from the Supreme Court over the definition of a woman may find that our celebrations were premature. In the aftermath trans rights activists took to the streets and Labour MPs began plotting to overturn the ruling.

Leaked WhatsApp messages involving senior government Ministers Dame Angela Eagle and Sir Chris Bryant, and their fellow Labour MPs Chris Murray and Steve Race revealed their anger with this decision. Dame Angela Eagle in her “private” WhatsApp message to her fellow Labour MPs referred to the ECHR guidance as being “catastrophic” and Labour MP for Exeter, Steve Race, said that Baroness Falkner’s interview about the ruling was “pretty appalling.”

Indeed, the WhatsApp messages reserved their main bitterness for the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission Chairman Baroness Falkner who had said that the Supreme Court ruling meant that trans women (ie, biological men) could not use single-sex female facilities or compete in women’s sport. So these MPs have arranged to meet this week, to decide their way forward – which can only be interpreted as an attempt to overturn the law as determined by the Supreme Court – a plot Keir Starmer has thus far refused to stop. It confirms that the fight for common sense and the blindingly obvious is far from over.

This is yet another example of why you cannot believe a word this Labour government tells you. After the betrayal of the winter fuel payments, taxes for working people, farmers and businesses (to name but a few) you can add women to the long list of people to whom this government speak with forked tongue.

After the Supreme Court judgment, the Minister for Women and Equalities, Bridget Phillipson, welcomed their ruling and said, “We have always supported the protection of single sex spaces based on biological sex.” That was news to me and many other people. Last year the very same Bridget Phillipson was reported to have said that trans women with penises can use female toilets.

So how on earth can both of those statements be compatible? The short answer is they can’t. She must presume the public either to be fools or to have crushingly short memories. Similarly Keir Starmer has previously been unable to define a woman, backed self-identification and stated that it was wrong to say that only women have a cervix.

And Rachel Reeves said she didn’t know how to answer a question regarding the definition of a woman. Funny that, after she made such a great deal about being the first woman Chancellor, and when so many laws she has to deal with specifically mention “women” and supposedly belongs to a party that has always purported to support women’s rights. The one thing that this episode has shown is clear – we don’t just have a two-tier government, we have a two-faced one as well.

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I have never had a particular type. I put that down to the fact I’m more drawn to a personality than a look. But I was reminded this week that some people absolutely do have a type when I saw Tom Cruise’s latest girlfriend – the very beautiful Ana de Armas – who bears an uncanny resemblance to Cruise’s previous amors Penelope Cruz, Katie Holmes and Nazanin Boniadi. As well as looking similar, the relationships have all lasted a similar amount of time – not long. As a keen supporter of the Church of Scientology, Tom will be praying this relationship lasts.

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This year Rachel Reeves claimed £1,225 on her MP expenses to pay someone else to help file her tax return – a claim for accountancy services she has made every year between 2014 and 2022. Is it just me or should that concern us all? If Rachel from Accounts can’t even do her own simple tax returns then what chance do the rest of us have? And if she isn’t capable of filling in her personal tax return each year, how on earth can she be trusted with the nation’s finances? God help us.

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St Ives Town Council should row back on its decision to clamp down on a decade-old tradition to stop ticket sellers from standing on the bay to sell boat trips to tourists. Instead, they now have to operate out of designated booths. Stray from them and they’ll will be fined £100 a day up to a total of £1,000. Why on earth are busybody local council chiefs always trying to stamp out any kind of entrepreneurial spirit? One day the public sector will realise that it is private sector business people who pays for them and their pet projects. That realisation can’t come soon enough.

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Good to see the NFU has finally taken my advice and will change its tactics in order to try and save British farming. Up until now protests have largely been held in Westminster and the government just hasn't listened. The latest one even fell foul of Starmer’s two-tier policing as tractors were refused entry to Westminster. Funnily enough, I don't recall any of the weekly Palestinian marches, even on Armistice Day, being halted, diverted or reduced in size. From this week, farmer protests will be focussed on the new rural Labour MPs who promised farmers the earth before the election but who are now voting for policies which will snatch their futures away from them and their family.

So far, those local MPs have dodged the brunt of the protests. Many have hidden out of the way of their farmers and refused to meet them. With any luck these new local protests will focus the minds of these local MPs, and make them listen. If Labour MPs in rural areas won’t respond to these protests it is entirely possible they will lose their jobs before the farmers do.

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Birmingham’s bin strike has been going on since March 11 with rubbish piling up and rats the size of cats prowling the streets, leaving a rancid air around the city. So imagine my surprise to see the Labour council’s “clean air zone” signs in Birmingham dotted alongside the mountains of rubbish. We have the ludicrous situation where local leaders in Birmingham are charging drivers to produce “clean air” whilst leaving stinking bins on the street. A comedy genius couldn’t have come up with that level of irony. Reality is sometimes less believable than fiction.