Boris Johnson the unlikely feminist is right to back women in Trans row

For a chap with seven confirmed children by three confirmed women and a reputation, as one columnist put it, as a “demonstrably misogynistic career sleazebag”, Boris Johnson is an unlikely feminist.

In fact, when his then press secretary, Allegra Stratton, described him thus last year, the howls of outrage emanating from female commentators, not all on the Left, almost drowned out the mocking laughter from those who really know him.

The Prime Minister’s relationship with women is his Achilles’ heel, often threatening to topple him from power in the past and still, one suspects, a source of vulnerability, political and otherwise.

And yet here he is, the unexpected champion of that half of the population who have been subjugated to an extraordinary campaign of cancellation and intimidation on account of their sex.

This week Johnson stood up for women by stating the obvious: biological males should not be allowed to compete in female sports, he said, following a row over a transgender cyclist attempting to switch from the men’s to the women’s league.

He also said women-only safe spaces should be protected, reiterating guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission earlier this week on women’s legal rights. And he insisted that parents should be involved in children’s decisions about changing their gender.

The PM’s critics accused him of “wading into” the transgender debate, which has polarised opinion and seen Britain’s major institutions, from the NHS to our universities, hijacked by a radical, minority mindset.

But so toxic has this subject become that for the government not to have an opinion, and express it clearly, would be a dereliction of duty.

All the same, to hear Johnson fighting our corner sounds counterintuitive. That it has fallen to him says more about his opponents than it does about his apparent feminist credentials.

Many women cannot countenance Johnson but find themselves in complete agreement with him on this issue, the same women who have been bewildered by their normal cheerleaders’ reluctance to defend them against trans activist bullying.

The Labour Party, from leader Keir Starmer to one-time female figureheads such as Yvette Cooper, has caved in to the militant trans lobby. They are so terrified of being labelled transphobic in the new orthodoxy – that dictates men are women and mothers to be are “pregnant people” — that they have sold out all (natal) women.

In Scotland, it’s worse. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, in post for more than seven years, has made enemies of female colleagues brave enough to oppose her extreme transgender politics. 

Joanna Cherry, MP for Edinburgh South West, was ousted from her front bench job a year ago for supporting women’s sex-based rights. She said she has since endured a “continued campaign of bullying and harassment” for her beliefs.

Feminist groups in Scotland have threatened to sue Sturgeon over gender recognition legislation (allowing anyone 16 or over to change gender on their birth certificate without medical checks) that they say erodes women’s rights.

Johnson is not exactly popular north of the border but imagine a world where female Scottish voters feel more represented by his “it just seems to me to be sensible” [that men shouldn’t compete in women’s sporting events], than by Sturgeon’s “trans women are women” dogma.

This has not been tested at the ballot box yet, but soon may be. Ahead of May’s local elections, a woman’s group, Respect My Sex, has demanded that prospective councillors declare their position on gender issues. Then women will be able to vote against politicians who refuse to recognise the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity.

Perhaps Johnson has spoken out now because he is emboldened by what he sees as the beginnings of a backlash against trans zealotry.

Unlike blameless authors and academics who have dared to speak out on the matter and been grossly maligned, some seeing their careers ruined, the PM is accustomed to the flak; it goes with the job.

He could have stuck his head above the parapet before now — others have, notably Baroness Nicholson in the Lords, who highlighted the NHS policy of allowing transgender patients to be placed according to how they dress or the pronouns they use, rather than their biological sex.

But better late than never; Boris’s “emperor’s new clothes” moment could mark a turning point in the war on damaging woke ideology, a creed that stifles important discussions and does nothing to enhance equality.

Already, his comments have unleashed lashings of common sense from other quarters, with the Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, telling NHS bosses to safeguard women-only hospital wards in line with the Equality Commission’s ruling.

Now, ordinary women may be less afraid of calling out the trans thought police who have sought to undermine the hard-won advances of female emancipation. We might have preferred a more fitting flagbearer, but if Johnson is all we’ve got in the vanguard of the feminist fightback, he will do.