Sharron Davies among three nominated to become Conservative peers

Times

a day ago

Kemi Badenoch is to appoint the Olympic medal-winning swimmer and gender-critical campaigner Sharron Davies as a Conservative peer.
The Conservative leader has nominated Davies, alongside the columnist Simon Heffer and the Tory treasurer Graham Edwards, for the next round of House of Lords appointments that are due to be announced in the autumn.
She will become the latest former athlete to enter the upper house, joining the former 1,500 metres champion Lord Coe and the Paralympian Baroness Grey-Thompson.
Davies has become an outspoken campaigner for women's rights in sport, warning of the risk of transgender athletes being able to self-identify. Two years ago she warned that 'mediocre male athletes' were 'stealing' medals from women and girls by self-identifying as the opposite gender.
Davies got to know Badenoch when the latter was equalities minister and instigated moves to tighten up the law around self-identification. This month she said that she could 'testify personally' to Badenoch being one of the very first ministers to 'push back against woke'.
'[She was] always fighting to maintain women's sports,' she said.
Davies also backed Badenoch for the Conservative leadership describing her as a 'fresh, brave and intelligent woman who's prepared to tackle issues head-on so many have ignored for too long.'
Davies was one of the UK's most successful swimmers in the 1970s and early 1980s, winning two gold medals at the 1978 Commonwealth Games and finishing second in the individual medley at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
She became involved in the question of trans women in sport having lost out on the gold medal to Petra Schneider who, along with other East German athletes, had been put on testosterone to enhance their performances through doping.
• Sharron Davies: IOC must take action for victims of sport's biggest heist
Alongside Davies, Badenoch has also nominated the right-wing columnist and author Heffer as another Tory peer. He has been supportive of Badenoch despite calls from some on the right to ditch her as leader in favour of Robert Jenrick.
Writing this year he said she displayed the kind of 'common-sense conservatism that was similar to that heard 'in the rhetoric of Reform politicians'.
'It is precisely the sort of approach that, if maintained over the next few years, will help persuade people that the Conservative Party again harbours conservative beliefs,' he wrote.
He added: 'If the Conservative Party were to panic and try to ditch Mrs Badenoch, who is still learning the job and making all the right noises, the small portion of the British public that still takes the party seriously would quickly cease to do so.'
The third nominee is Edwards, the Conservative Party treasurer, who has helped Badenoch prop up the party's finances after its historic defeat last year.
Figures released in June revealed that the Tories raised £3.3 million in the first quarter of the year, above Labour, with £2.3 million, and Nigel Farage's Reform, which raised £1.48 million. Edwards has personally given the party more than half a million pounds since the election.
Labour is attempting to rebalance the make up of the House of Lords in its favour after its landslide election win.
In December Starmer appointed 30 new peers — while the Tories were given just six new appointments.
At present there are 209 Labour peers compared with 285 Conservative members — a figure which is expected to drop if the government successfully abolishes hereditary peers.