by Jo Bartosch, spiked
The High Court has ruled that uniformed officers have no business promoting gender ideology.
Few sights are more cringe-inducing than the police trying to be liked. Whether it’s officers awkwardly grooving at Notting Hill Carnival or skipping arm-in-arm with the gender goons at Pride, such sycophantic pandering doesn’t inspire confidence – it invites ridicule. Worse still, it calls their impartiality into question. Now, thanks to a landmark High Court ruling handed down this week, police forces will have to think twice before participating in events that are perceived to be partisan.
The judgment concerns a case brought by Linzi Smith, a gender-critical lesbian and Newcastle United fan, against Northumbria Police. The same force once subjected her to a two-hour interrogation after her football club reported her to the police for social-media posts it deemed ‘transphobic’.
Smith claimed – quite sensibly – that when chief constable Vanessa Jardine joined Newcastle Pride last summer, flanked by uniformed officers, with rainbow-emblazoned police branding and even a van painted in the colours of the Pride flag, it sent a clear message: if you don’t subscribe to trans ideology, don’t expect the police to be on your side.