Steerpike Steerpike

Suella goes for Penny on gender row

(Photo by Rob Pinney/Getty Images)

Is the leadership race turning toxic already? Three days in and Rishi Sunak has been the target of a vicious private memo while Nadhim Zahawi is fighting off questions about his tax arrangements. Now it seems that Penny Mordaunt is the latest candidate in the firing line; namely over her past support for trans rights. The ‘PM4PM’ campaign has got off to a shaky start, having been forced to remove its campaign video after using footage of a British Paralympian without his permission.

And now, despite releasing a midnight Twitter thread to try to rebut criticisms that Mordaunt is ‘woke’, Penny is facing flak from the Tory right. Mordaunt has claimed that it was she who ‘changed maternity legislation that was drafted in gender neutral language to use female terms.’ The legislation in question was about the right of government minsters to take maternity leave. But commentators like Tim Shipman of the Sunday Times have rejected Mordaunt’s account, reporting that she actually wanted the term ‘pregnant person’ in the legislation but was overruled by colleagues such as Liz Truss and Nadine Dorries.

And now Braverman herself has entered the debate, releasing a lengthy statement setting out her own account of the 2021 row over the Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Act. While she declines to name Mordaunt, she says that ‘to have my female body referred to as being that of a “pregnant person” was distressing and unnecessary’ adding that it was ‘the Cabinet Office who were for responsible for the bill.’ At the time of course Mordaunt was serving in that department as Paymaster General.

Braverman then goes in studs-up on the ministry, declaring that owing to its ‘intransigence… what should have been a sign of progress became a bitterly contested bill’ adding the legislation was ‘hijacked for trans activists’ and labelling it ‘an indulgence of extremism.’ She says only the support of members of the House of Lords meant the term referred to a ‘woman’. Braverman ends with a veiled barb: ‘It is my hope that just as we should call pregnant women what they are, we will all of us accurately recall what we did and said in office.’

Ouch.

Steerpike
Written by
Steerpike

Steerpike is The Spectator's gossip columnist, serving up the latest tittle tattle from Westminster and beyond. Email tips to steerpike@spectator.co.uk or message @MrSteerpike

Topics in this article

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in