by Austen Morgan, Conservative Home
Is woke dying?…not among the charity workers of the parliamentary labour party! And the evidence is: enthusiasm for trans rights among the four hundred labour MPs, in the face of feminist defence of women-only spaces (including lesbian communities).
Andy Burnham recently took away Bridget Phillipson’s day job as education secretary, but left her in the cabinet as minister for women and equalities. (Her job before entering parliament in 2010 at 26 years? Yes, charity worker!) On 25 June 2026, Phillipson had published a short conversion practices draft bill. On 27 July 2026, the new prime minister appointed her chair of the labour party.
The draft conversion practices bill – with only six clauses – has little to do with gays and lesbians, historically the victims of alleged medical and religious conversion therapies in a more biblical legal age. Same-sex people are now well protected by the Equality Act (‘EA’) 2010 against any such abuses. Sexual orientation – I submit – has been included in clause 1 (‘meaning of “conversion practice” and related terms’) to create legitimacy for very different groups on the sexual politics front: women who identify as men; and (much more problematically) men who identify as women.
Phillipson’s draft bill, which is not yet ready to be legislated, is a political gesture to trans activism (once based upon sufferers of gender dysphoria, a psychological condition). Trans activists have – largely through Stonewall – replaced the concept of (biological) sex with (subjective) gender, and engaged in cultural warfare with TERFs: so-called trans-exclusionary radical feminists (including the statutory equality and human rights commission, now under Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson).