The Labour party didn’t deserve Rosie Duffield

This most principled of MPs was ostracised for speaking out against transgender lunacy

Back in 2017, a story appeared on the front page of the Sunday Times which, when I read the headline, immediately made me think it was one of those spoof articles that newspapers publish on April Fools’ Day. Only the date was 23 July, so I knew that couldn’t be the case.

‘Tories promote right to choose your own sex,’ ran the headline.

The accompanying report revealed that the-then Conservative government was proposing to amend legislation so that, ‘Men will be able to identify themselves as women – and women as men – and have their birth certificates altered to record their new gender’.

Existing rules requiring individuals to have been diagnosed with ‘gender dysphoria’ and lived in their ‘desired gender’ for at least two years would be scrapped. In future, people could simply ‘self-identify’. According to the report, critics had warned that a ’firestorm’ would be unleashed ‘over access to women-only hospital wards, prisons, lavatories, changing rooms and competitive sports’.

As a then senior official in the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), I knew that such a profound shift would carry all manner of implications for the dignity and security of women members of my own union – many of whom had long struggled to secure their own dedicated facilities (locker rooms, showers and the like) on fire stations. And as a husband and a father of a young girl, I was also concerned about the wider consequences of the proposals.

In truth, I thought the government’s plans were barking mad. So I posted a screenshot of the newspaper front page alongside the following tweet:

‘Coming next: short people may identify as tall, fat people may identify as thin, and ugly people may pretend to be George Clooney.’

And then the sky fell in.