Imagine you’re mid-flight on a passenger jet when turbulence strikes and the cockpit door swings open. You glance inside — only to find the pilot and co-pilot filming a TikTok dance.
This, in essence, was Monday’s Westminster Hall debate on Gender Self-identification. A group of preening left-leaning politicians treated Parliament not as a forum for serious deliberation, but as a stage for a self-indulgent performance. A crash seems inevitable.
The trans love-in, introduced by Liberal Democrat Dr Roz Savage, was triggered by a petition that attracted 120,000 signatures over six months. The Government’s official response was unambiguous: it has no plans to introduce gender self-ID. But the MPs on Monday behaved as if they hadn’t read the memo — or engaged with anyone beyond their bubble of smug.
For over a decade, women’s rights, child safeguarding and medical ethics have been destabilised by an ideology that insists that feelings trump facts. Campaigners, parents, and professionals have tried everything: letters, protests, court cases. Finally last month, air traffic control radioed in with clarity: the Supreme Court ruling confirmed that “sex” in the Equality Act means biological sex. You’d think this might prompt politicians to recalibrate. Not a chance, says Independent Rosie Duffield MP:
Despite the court ruling, high-profile cancellations, the books, the media investigations, the employment tribunals, the heartbreaking stories of detransitioners, even the fact that someone like JK Rowling is vilified for stating basic truths — some political parties and politicians still haven’t noticed. They seem utterly determined to carry on as if none of this matters, clinging to the belief that they are right and the rest of us are just nasty, bigoted or “transphobic” for daring to disagree.
Savage proved Duffield’s point. She opened by boasting that a trans staffer helped write her speech — a possible reason for the tangle of muddled and misleading claims it contained (though of course Savage appears more than capable of being muddled and misleading herself). Chief among these errors: that getting a Gender Recognition Certificate requires medical reports, blood tests, and hormone prescriptions costing “thousands.” In reality, it’s a £5 admin process.
She then went further, claiming, “Trans women without access to gender-affirming care are significantly more likely to attempt suicide — one in five will try.” She appears unaware of the peer reviewed studies showing no decrease — and in some cases, even a rise — in suicidality following surgical or hormonal interventions. Nor did she seem familiar with the high rate of mental health comorbidities among trans-identifying individuals. It wasn’t just sloppy — it was grossly irresponsible.
Meanwhile, other MPs jostled to signal their allyship, trotting out sob stories of trans constituents supposedly too frightened to use public toilets for fear of being confronted by middle-aged feminists.
Labour’s Richard Quigley framed critics as dangerous agitators, accusing them of “seeking to sow division and manufacture culture wars.” Fellow backbencher Tim Roca added a geopolitical twist, complaining that the “toxic debate” was an attempt to import American-style politics.
Then came the Green Party’s Sian Berry, who praised a man called Abigail —her co-author on an Early Day Motion. She beamed as she recalled his declaration: “I am a woman. I cannot explain that, it is simply true.” The EDM claims “gender ideology” doesn’t exist, and is merely a term used by bigots. It also condemns the “baseless fearmongering” of the media. Presumably that includes the journalists who have spent years documenting the real-world wreckage of this mythical ideology in prisons, hospitals, schools, and sports.
SNP’s Kirsty Blackman, affronted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s guidance on the Supreme Court ruling, demanded that an independent body replace the regulator. She also fumed that groups like Sex Matters and the LGB Alliance had the audacity to attend the Equality Act’s 15th birthday celebrations. Bizarrely, she then claimed to be unaware of any way, bar a DNA test, of determining a person’s sex. Lib Dem Christine Jardine agreed, calling the idea that the government should collect data about people’s sex “confusing and incomprehensible.”
No one discussed the Cass Review, detransitioners, or the steady rise in children referred for medicalisation. Nor did anyone comment on the right of women like the Darlington Nurses not to be forced to share their private spaces with men.
While these MPs were emoting in unison, the man once dubbed the UK’s first “openly trans MP,” Jamie Wallis — who now goes by “Katie” — was facing charges for harassing his ex-wife. This isn’t even his first scandal. In 2022, Wallis — then a serving MP — crashed his car into a telegraph pole while wearing fetish gear and fled the scene. He also previously ran a “sugar daddy” website. Politicians who lined up to salute his courage appear to have forgotten him.
The cockpit crew are still filming dances, mid-dive, for their shrinking audience
Most people outside Westminster assumed that when the Supreme Court clarified the law, reality would return. That institutions would begin to reintroduce sex-based policies. That women’s hospital wards, domestic abuse shelters, and changing rooms would revert to being single-sex. But in that chamber on Monday, it was clear: the cockpit crew are still filming dances, mid-dive, for their shrinking audience.
And the rest of us? We’re still strapped in, watching the ground get nearer.
