In just five months, this government has shown its true socialist colours. It is not only following economic nostrums that failed in the post-war period, but is attacking the Constitution by undermining its pillars.
The English Constitution, and subsequently that of the United Kingdom, depends upon four main supports. These are democracy, the rule of law, property rights and freedom of speech.
Each one is dependent upon the other, but three of the four are under attack and two current news stories show that it is immediate.
The most recent is the upholding of a complaint against the Spectator by IPSO, the independent press regulator. In May, Gareth Roberts wrote a piece for the Online Spectator on Transgender Issues, where he referred to Juno Dawson as “a man who claims to be a woman”.
Dawson was born a man but was given a gender recognition certificate in 2018 to say he is now a woman. IPSO believes that calling him a man is discriminatory.
This is absurd. Free speech must allow people to say hurtful things, and surely discrimination is in actions, not words. I would not favour refusing someone who claimed to change sex a job. However, to insist by law that we must all accept that it is possible to change sex is nonsense, and requires people to acknowledge something as true that is untrue.
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