by Jim Chimirie on X
Last year the Supreme Court ruled that the definition of a woman under the Equality Act is based on biological sex. It was the clearest possible legal statement on one of the most contested questions in British public life. For Women Scotland won the case. The law was settled. The courts had spoken.
Plymouth City Council’s response was to submit plans to fly the Progress Pride flag on the Guildhall. The Local Government Act 1986 prohibits local authorities from publishing material that promotes a politically controversial viewpoint. This is not a grey area. It is black letter law. The Christian Legal Centre has warned the council that flying the flag constitutes political endorsement and is open to judicial review. For Women Scotland has called it stupid and reckless. The council’s response is that the flag represents people, not a political party, and that Plymouth is an inclusive city.
The flag represents, among other things, a direct defiance of the Supreme Court judgment that For Women Scotland won. A Labour council is flying, on a civic building that belongs to every resident of Plymouth, a symbol that repudiates a ruling of the highest court in the land. Call it what it is. Institutional defiance of the law dressed as compassion.
And Plymouth is not alone. Camden installed transgender pride flag road crossings four years ago. King’s Lynn and West Norfolk tried to fly the flag outside its headquarters this month. NHS trusts have rolled out gender self-identification policies that contradict the Equality Act as now clarified by the courts. Schools have been issuing guidance allowing social transition of children without parental consent in direct contradiction of the Cass Review, which the government commissioned and then declined to enforce. The police have recorded crimes committed by biological males against women under the perpetrator’s preferred gender. The institutions have decided, collectively and without democratic mandate, that the law is an obstacle to their ideology rather than a constraint on it.