You might not have noticed that yesterday the Government announced possible changes to the Gender Recognition Act. That’s what ministers wanted: the announcement was carefully made late in the day and was partly obscured by an earlier promise to ban “conversion therapy” that tries to stop gay people being gay.
Why did the Government bury its transgender announcement? The approach was very different last autumn when the Prime Minister herself fronted a prominent media drive which Tory spinners said showed that the Conservatives were inclining towards a system of “self-identified” gender. Yesterday, by contrast, ministers released a deliberately neutral set of consultation questions and kicked decisions on reform into early 2019 by saying the consultation will be open until late October. Conservatives who once rushed to embrace the reforms sought by some transgender lobbying groups are now — behind all their nice words — moving much more cautiously.
So what changed between the autumn of 2017 and this week? There are two factors, one public, one largely private.
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