Helena Kennedy says any Scottish move could serve ‘almost as a pilot’ for a future UK Labour government
As Libby Brooks and Peter Walker report in our overnight story, the UK government is considering blocking a new bill passed by the Scottish parliament yesterday that would make Scotland the first part of the UK to introduce a self-identification system for people who want to change gender.
In a good analysis of the dispute, my colleague Pippa Crerar says Dougie Smith, a long-serving Tory backroom fixer best known for masterminding Boris Johnson’s ‘war on woke’, is thought to be driving UK government policy on this. She says:
The Guardian has been told that a former adviser to Boris Johnson is behind the UK government’s response to the new gender reform laws. Dougie Smith, who coordinated the “war on woke” pursued by the Johnson administration, has been tasked with “weaponising” the issue of trans rights before the next election.
One cabinet source claims the long-term Tory fixer, who is close to Sunak, is acting as “puppet master” to the equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, who is fronting the government’s strategy. He was said to be behind Johnson’s strategy to stir divisions on racial, heritage and cultural issues to ally the Tories with working-class voters in “red wall” seats.
But it really is only about trying to make it less oppressive for trans people. The system at the moment, where they have to get a gender recognition certificate, is a really humiliating and degrading one and lasts a very long time. And so what they were seeking was something that was much more straightforward, where it wasn’t going to involve invasive medical processes, and I think that that’s the sensible way forward.
