For a man who casts himself as the pint‑swilling voice of common sense, Nigel Farage has a curious blind spot. Confronted with the question of whether men who identify as women should be housed in women’s prisons, the normally booming bar‑room sage suddenly turned coy:
“I personally never worked in a prison, so I can’t answer it … it’s basically about risk assessment, isn’t it?”
He might not have worked in a prison, but it doesn’t take insider knowledge to understand what happens when male inmates are placed with women. Yet Farage kicked the trans prisoner question to Vanessa Frake, the party’s freshly‑minted justice adviser. Frake, a former prison governor, thinks “transgender women” shouldn’t automatically be barred from the female estate and that each case should be risk assessed.
Prisoners might not be the most media friendly bunch, but people care about the cruelty of locking men up with women. Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon found this out the hard way when double rapist Isla Bryson was sent to the female estate, sparking such outrage that he was swiftly transferred back to the men’s. By this point Sturgeon was already in the political departure lounge, and her reign ended just months later.
It’s an oddly equivocal stance from a man who styles himself the swaggering scourge of political correctness. Farage has never worked in a migrant detention centre, yet he never hesitates to hold forth on immigration. He’s never had a desk at the Bank of England, but that hasn’t stopped him pontificating on fiscal policy. But when it comes to men in women’s prisons, he hides behind an “expert” as if the matter is either beneath his notice or beyond his ability.
On women’s rights, Reform suffers the same myopia as the left
Such complacency is a gift to the Conservatives. Kemi Badenoch pounced with a slick video accusing Reform of not caring about women’s rights:
“The fact that Nigel Farage doesn’t know whether men should be put in women’s prisons proves the point. Conservatives are the ONLY party that will protect women’s spaces.”
Farage responded by quoting an old video praising the Supreme Court ruling that defined sex as biological adding the line: “I have never supported men in women’s prisons.” But the damage was done. The slip exposed that Reform is only interested in women’s rights when there’s obvious political capital to be gained.
Frake’s description during a Times interview of some female inmates as “vile” is doubtless informed by long experience — she oversaw the incarceration of both Myra Hindley and Rosemary West. But no matter how abhorrent their crimes, female prisoners should not be forced to live under the reality or threat of male sexual violence.
And while not every trans-identified male inmate is a Buffalo Bill character, the risk is real. Ministry of Justice figures show that around two‑thirds of “trans women” in custody are sex offenders. Women’s prisons have become a soft option for some of the most manipulative and dangerous male offenders, offering a captive pool of traumatised women and a bureaucratic culture terrified of being accused of discrimination. Meanwhile, some prisoners report being threatened with increased sentences or other punishments if they dare to point out the sex of the men they’re locked up with.
The Supreme Court ruling earlier this year could not have been clearer: sex means biological sex under equality law, and trans‑identified males can be lawfully excluded from women’s spaces, including prisons. This gives any party claiming to defend “common sense” the perfect cover to adopt a blanket ban. Instead, Reform’s new adviser wants to keep the cell door ajar — and Farage, by his own admission, hasn’t bothered to look into the matter.
This is the point. Farage can sniff out the political potency of warning about the threat to British women posed by dinghies full of undocumented migrants from the world’s most misogynist hellholes. Yet he remains curiously incurious about the policy inside Britain’s own jails — a danger to the safety and dignity of the 3,500 women in custody. It’s almost as if Reform only considers women at all when there’s a “bigger” political point to make.
The Right likes to imagine it’s the last refuge of traditional common sense. But on women’s rights, Reform suffers the same myopia as the left. Women are not regarded as a discrete political constituency; we are an afterthought, a bolt‑on to more “serious” issues. The principle that the female estate should be protected from male offenders isn’t fringe or faddish — it’s enshrined in the laws that underpin every liberal democracy. The stakes of poor policy in this area aren’t theoretical; they are measured in the harms done to women, many of whom have already suffered violence at the hands of men.
Farage likes to posture as the bloke down the pub who says what everyone’s thinking. But on this, he isn’t saying what most women are thinking — because he isn’t thinking about women at all.
