Kemi Badenoch has suggested that JK Rowling deserves a seat in the House of Lords. The Tory leadership contender said in an interview with Talk TV: ‘I don’t know whether she would take it but I certainly would give her a peerage’.
Rowling certainly deserves credit for her tireless stand against the transgender madness. For more than four years, she has spoken out courageously, sometimes in the face of dreadful abuse, to say things that we once all knew to be true: that being a woman is far more than an assertion of a supposedly female gender identity. The Harry Potter author has been a key voice in a debate that has moved so far from the dark days of 2017.
Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch says she would give Harry Potter author JK Rowling a peerage for her support on gender issues.
— Talk (@TalkTV) October 17, 2024
Watch @KemiBadenoch's interview with @Iromg in full on YouTube now ► https://t.co/7YSwkwdkP1 pic.twitter.com/UJOyz7GyNR
Back then, politics was very different. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn might not have agreed on much, but they both appeared to be in thrall to gender identity ideology. Corbyn urged May to allow anyone to self-identify their gender; she subsequently pledged to do just that. Campaigners against such folly were on the back foot. Common sense and hard truths were harder to sell than the fantasy that we could all choose our sex. However, when Rowling spoke up in 2020 to criticise women being referred to as ‘people who menstruate’, the message got out to the wider public. More politicians saw reason, and self-ID was shelved, at least in the UK. Thank you, JKR!
In the interview, Badenoch also cited Hilary Cass, another courageous woman who has already been ennobled. ‘I managed to get Dr Hilary Cass a peerage because I knew that she was someone who would have a strong voice in parliament,’ said Badenoch. Cass led the review of gender identity services for children and young people that ultimately resulted in the closure of GIDS – the children’s clinic run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. Safeguards were also subsequently put on the supply of puberty blockers to British children distressed about their sex.
Badenoch clearly believes that being so open with her views will help her defeat Robert Jenrick in the ballot of Tory party members. She is probably right. Most people must know that sex is real, and that it was a terrible idea to even consider treating teenage angst with drugs. But before Rowling spoke up, Cass did her work, and Badenoch took her position, rather few were willing to admit it.
Badenoch is, of course, no longer in government and so the power of making decisions now lies with the party opposite. Wes Streeting, the Labour health secretary, made a good start when he upheld the ban on puberty blockers that was put in place as an emergency measure in the final days of the Conservative government.
But there is much more work still to do. Gender identity ideology – the idea that we all have a gender identity that might trump biological sex – has run rampant throughout our institutions. GIDS might have closed, but Streeting needs to keep a very close eye on what might replace it.
For now, though, one thing is clear: Badenoch is right. Rowling probably deserves a peerage. But that gong will count for little if common sense doesn’t prevail in the gender debate.
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