Bridget looked likely to smash a pint glass in the nearest Hooray Henry's face

Daily Mail​

23-04-2025

Here on the far side of the moon, where different obsessions grip, MPs gathered late in the day to discuss the Supreme Court 's revolutionary decision: that a woman is a woman. There was shock. Anger. There were v. nearly tears.
Sarah Owen (Lab, Luton N) complained that the court's ruling 'was made without a single contribution from trans people'. Ms Owen seemed to be implying that no member of the Supreme Court had swapped genders. Given those unisex Euro-style robes they wear, can she be sure?
What a palaver ensued. Where were trans people going to go to the loo? Or serve prison sentences? How were sporting bodies going to react?
In vain did the House turn to Bridget Phillipson for answers. Ms Phillipson, minister for equalities, ground her jaw and spoke darkly about 'toilet facilities'. Lacking much else to say, she blamed the Tories for 'playing politics'.
Scary Bridget was smouldering. Almost levitating with crossness. This jagged class-warrior, for whom all Righties (and, it sometimes seems, plenty of men) are curs, spat out her insistence that everyone deserved to be treated with 'dignity and respect'. She must have said that phrase 20 times. Each time she looked more likely to smash a pint glass on the bar top and grind it in the nearest Hooray Henry's face.
Labour MPs, normally so reverent towards the Supreme Court, boiled and stewed and simmered and steamed. It was like being in a chop suey kitchen. These Labour loyalists, who for years had played the identity-politics game with such grim determination, now sat with their arms crossed, cheeks pinkening. Conservatives, meanwhile, were cock-a-hoop, if one can use that expression.
The Tories were so waggy-tailed that their leader, Kemi Badenoch, broke custom and led the Opposition's response to this non-prime ministerial statement. She had even put on some red shoes for the occasion. Mrs B was so excited that she thanked Ms Phillipson 'for advance sight of his statement'. Oops.
The jargon – cis men, trans men, trans women – made your eyeballs throb. Your sketch writer tried to follow but did not always succeed. Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) mumbled to himself and I felt a sudden kinship with the old booby. Sarah Dyke (Lib Dem, Glastonbury & Somerton) said 'many people are feeling confused'. That was one way of putting it.
Words tumbled out of Mrs Badenoch as she recalled the ordure that was long thrown at her for questioning trans orthodoxies. Labour MPs hated hearing this but for once – with the exception of a finger-jabbing Emma Foody (Cramlington & Killingworth) – they did not try to drown out her words with derisive bellowing. While Mrs B was speaking the right heel of Dame Emily Thornberry (Lab, Islington South) rotated at food-mixer speed.
Blair McDougall (Lab, East Renfrewshire) gazed uneasily at the ceiling. Gareth Snell (Lab, Stoke Central) stretched his leg to show us three inches of ivory shin as he twiddled with his lanyard. And no, that isn't a euphemism.
Nadia Whittome (Lab, Nottingham East) and Zarah Sultana (Ind, Coventry South), quavered with emotion as they deplored the damage to trans rights. Emily Darlington (Lab, Milton Keynes Central) was so indignant at Conservative merriment that she stalled mid-contribution, gasping. She was enraged that people were heckling her. It was a tiny fraction of what Mrs Badenoch has to endure most Wednesdays.
Earlier that prize switcher Sir Keir Starmer said he no longer believed blokes with whatnots could be women. Make your mind up, sunshine.
Sir Keir, a lawyer, perhaps only believes things when he hears them from Supreme Court beaks. Or had Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff, given the PM a lecture on the facts of life?
My late father, a schoolmaster, used to have to do that to 13-year-old boys who were about to leave his school. Sometimes they laughed. Sometimes they said, 'Oh come off it, sir, that's dis-GUSTING!' Which, basically, was the reaction of Labour to this judgment.