It is ten months since the then merely aspirant education secretary Bridget Phillipson addressed the important issue of where transgender people should go for a quick slash. Bridget was very much of the opinion that if you had a gender recognition certificate, then you should make for the cubicle which matched with whatever it said on that piece of paper, because it’s the ‘humane approach’. She added: ‘But I would expect that if you were someone that had gone through that formal process of recognition you are, to all intents and purposes, for legal purposes, regarded as being in a different gender, regardless of the sex into which you were born.’
This week, Bridget changed her mind. No matter what sex you are pretending to be, you should use the cubicle which matches with your biological sex, as determined at birth. That Supreme Court decision is the reason Bridget is now able to see things a little more clearly. It is almost ten months since David Lammy, the then aspirant foreign secretary, informed a startled world that men could grow a cervix if they wished. Perhaps after having purchased a kit from B&Q. I don’t know if David has subsequently resiled from this view or if he is sticking to it and has even gone so far as to buy a kit himself and water it on his windowsill every evening. I am fairly sure, however, that he doesn’t really believe any of that guff, which was rubbish back in June 2024 just as much as it is today.
What I think Bridget and David and indeed Sir Keir and the rest of them were indulging in was what we might call ‘performative lying’.
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