Dan James Smith is a communications and branding expert, and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and the Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC). He is also trustee of LGB Alliance, the UK’s only charity dedicated solely to the rights of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals.
Kemi is a no-nonsense gal.
Whether calling out Kate Osborne’s lies in a Select Committee, intervening in Scotland’s self-ID absurdity, or telling BBC hosts she doesn’t need to watch Casualty to know what’s happening in the NHS, she has won admirers well beyond the party faithful.
Her refusal to bow to fashionable orthodoxies was on full display when the transgender rights debate came to Westminster. “Stonewall doesn’t dictate the law”. Five words, and a long overdue reality check. For years, the charity’s ‘There is no debate campaign’ sought to silence disagreement, while its former CEO compared the belief that sex is binary – known as ‘gender critical’ – to antisemitism.
Yet much of the West succumbed to gender identity ideology: the belief that self-declared identity matters more than biological sex. Politicians, unions and public bodies embraced ideas that required denial of obvious truths: that sex is real, men and women are different, and safeguarding depends on recognising that distinction.
In Britain, unions put male feelings ahead of women’s rights, while politicians suddenly found themselves unable to define a woman. Step forward Keir Starmer, Ed Davey and Nicola Sturgeon.
But Kemi? She never flinched from speaking the truth. While others tied themselves in knots, she stood firm on sex-based rights, earning praise from figures as prominent as J.K. Rowling.
Claire Coutinho recently reaffirmed the Conservative commitment to sex-based rights and the EHRC’s Code of Practice. For many women who watched Labour trip over itself on the issue, it was a reminder of where the dividing line now sits.
I don’t believe Kemi accepted the fashionable claim that sexual orientation – lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) and gender identity (TQIA+) were interchangeable. In the Commons in 2023, she warned that “the threat to many young gay people is not conversion relating to their sexuality, but conversion relating to gender identity”, arguing that some gay youngsters were being told they were transgender. Writing to the Women and Equalities Committee the following year, she expanded the point, warning that young gay people risked having their gender non-conformity misread as evidence of a transgender identity. This was not a new frontier of gay rights but a challenge to them.
But herein lies the first problem. Not everyone received the memo. Some Conservatives still seem more comfortable with Stonewall’s worldview than biological reality. Caroline Nokes MP championed reforms that would move gender recognition closer to self-identification. London Assembly Member Andrew Boff, meanwhile, chose to heckle Olympian Baroness Sharron Davies at conference, denouncing a session on gender identity as “curating hatred”. Heckling women from the audience. Classy.
This dilemma seems to be resolving itself. Kemi and Claire’s opposition to gender ideology is full-throated, and the more muscular candidate selection process is, I hope, filtering out Liberal Democrats who accidentally joined the wrong party. No process is infallible, though.
The second dilemma is official affiliated group, LGBT+ Conservatives. By the late 2010s, LGBT+ Conservatives often looked less like an affiliate and more like Stonewall’s parliamentary fan club. The two organisations shared platforms, spoke a similar language on gender identity, and frequently found themselves on the same side of the argument. The ideological overlap was hard to miss, and, as broadcaster Peter Barnes tweeted in 2023, if you held gender critical views you were made to feel ‘persona non grata’.
In 2018, LGBT+ Conservatives accused David T. C. Davies MP of transphobia for observing that a person with male genitalia is not a woman. The tweet was later deleted and an apology issued. An affiliated organisation rebuking one of its own MPs for stating a biological reality has aged badly.
More recent own goals include today’s Chair of LGBT+ Conservatives, Jamie Mulhall, who declared on Twitter in June that he would not “drop the T” from LGBT.
Critics emerged from across the political spectrum, suggesting his comments reflected a wider failure to recognise how far opinion had shifted among many gay Conservatives.
Four days later, LGBT+ Conservatives launched a membership survey. Curiously, it avoided the very question at the heart of the dispute: whether the LGB should remain permanently attached to the T. The survey closed more than two months ago. Members were promised the results “in the coming weeks”. Evidently, nobody specified which weeks. Only recently did the Chair concede publication would be delayed until after October’s Conference. Draw your own conclusions.
Weeks later, the Chair was still insisting that “nothing fundamentally changes by dropping one letter”. For some members, that only reinforced the suspicion that the answer had been decided before the question had been asked. The group’s Executive Committee remained silent.
As a member of LGBT+ Conservatives, my concern is not that the organisation lacks a voice. It’s that the voice too often belongs to the people running it, rather than the members paying for it.
And sometimes what an organisation chooses not to say is every bit as revealing as what it does.
On issues squarely within its remit, such as Labour’s Conversion Practices Bill, the group has been conspicuously quiet. If ever there were a moment for an LGBT organisation to articulate a position, this would seem to be it.
It would be churlish not to acknowledge the good stuff. LGBT+ Conservatives has taken a clear stance against the puberty blockers trial, organised social events and supported members on the campaign trail. Credit where it’s due.
The problem is that, somewhere along the way, the group developed an identity crisis. Too often it remembered the LGBT and forgot the Conservative.
So what is the solution? As Kemi’s renewal project returns the Conservative Party to its roots, LGBT+ Conservatives should do the same. Before 2016, the previous incarnations of the group focused exclusively on LGB. It could sympathise with those experiencing gender dysphoria without insisting that sexual orientation and gender identity were the same political cause. The LGB and T were not force-teamed.
The path is already being cleared by sister right-wing groups. Conservatives for Women has championed the restoration of sex-based rights, an end to publicly funded gender ideology, and recognition of biological sex in NHS policy and data collection. Across the Atlantic, the Log Cabin Republicans recently decided to focus exclusively on LGB advocacy, dropping the T+. The precedent has been set.
Not every gay Conservative will agree with me, and nor should they. Conservatives are not a monolith. But we should at least be practising the same religion.
I remain optimistic. Kemi’s renewal project is returning the Conservative Party to reality, personal responsibility and common sense. Most of the battle has already been won. What remains is housekeeping. The direction is right; the loose ends simply need tying up. Doing so would help rebuild trust with many gay and gender-critical voters while denying Reform an issue the Conservatives should already own.
Dan James Smith is a communications and branding expert, and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and the Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC). He is also trustee of LGB Alliance, the UK’s only charity dedicated solely to the rights of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals.
Kemi is a no-nonsense gal.
Whether calling out Kate Osborne’s lies in a Select Committee, intervening in Scotland’s self-ID absurdity, or telling BBC hosts she doesn’t need to watch Casualty to know what’s happening in the NHS, she has won admirers well beyond the party faithful.
Her refusal to bow to fashionable orthodoxies was on full display when the transgender rights debate came to Westminster. “Stonewall doesn’t dictate the law”. Five words, and a long overdue reality check. For years, the charity’s ‘There is no debate campaign’ sought to silence disagreement, while its former CEO compared the belief that sex is binary – known as ‘gender critical’ – to antisemitism.
Yet much of the West succumbed to gender identity ideology: the belief that self-declared identity matters more than biological sex. Politicians, unions and public bodies embraced ideas that required denial of obvious truths: that sex is real, men and women are different, and safeguarding depends on recognising that distinction.
In Britain, unions put male feelings ahead of women’s rights, while politicians suddenly found themselves unable to define a woman. Step forward Keir Starmer, Ed Davey and Nicola Sturgeon.
But Kemi? She never flinched from speaking the truth. While others tied themselves in knots, she stood firm on sex-based rights, earning praise from figures as prominent as J.K. Rowling.
Claire Coutinho recently reaffirmed the Conservative commitment to sex-based rights and the EHRC’s Code of Practice. For many women who watched Labour trip over itself on the issue, it was a reminder of where the dividing line now sits.
I don’t believe Kemi accepted the fashionable claim that sexual orientation – lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) and gender identity (TQIA+) were interchangeable. In the Commons in 2023, she warned that “the threat to many young gay people is not conversion relating to their sexuality, but conversion relating to gender identity”, arguing that some gay youngsters were being told they were transgender. Writing to the Women and Equalities Committee the following year, she expanded the point, warning that young gay people risked having their gender non-conformity misread as evidence of a transgender identity. This was not a new frontier of gay rights but a challenge to them.
But herein lies the first problem. Not everyone received the memo. Some Conservatives still seem more comfortable with Stonewall’s worldview than biological reality. Caroline Nokes MP championed reforms that would move gender recognition closer to self-identification. London Assembly Member Andrew Boff, meanwhile, chose to heckle Olympian Baroness Sharron Davies at conference, denouncing a session on gender identity as “curating hatred”. Heckling women from the audience. Classy.
This dilemma seems to be resolving itself. Kemi and Claire’s opposition to gender ideology is full-throated, and the more muscular candidate selection process is, I hope, filtering out Liberal Democrats who accidentally joined the wrong party. No process is infallible, though.
The second dilemma is official affiliated group, LGBT+ Conservatives. By the late 2010s, LGBT+ Conservatives often looked less like an affiliate and more like Stonewall’s parliamentary fan club. The two organisations shared platforms, spoke a similar language on gender identity, and frequently found themselves on the same side of the argument. The ideological overlap was hard to miss, and, as broadcaster Peter Barnes tweeted in 2023, if you held gender critical views you were made to feel ‘persona non grata’.
In 2018, LGBT+ Conservatives accused David T. C. Davies MP of transphobia for observing that a person with male genitalia is not a woman. The tweet was later deleted and an apology issued. An affiliated organisation rebuking one of its own MPs for stating a biological reality has aged badly.
More recent own goals include today’s Chair of LGBT+ Conservatives, Jamie Mulhall, who declared on Twitter in June that he would not “drop the T” from LGBT.
Critics emerged from across the political spectrum, suggesting his comments reflected a wider failure to recognise how far opinion had shifted among many gay Conservatives.
Four days later, LGBT+ Conservatives launched a membership survey. Curiously, it avoided the very question at the heart of the dispute: whether the LGB should remain permanently attached to the T. The survey closed more than two months ago. Members were promised the results “in the coming weeks”. Evidently, nobody specified which weeks. Only recently did the Chair concede publication would be delayed until after October’s Conference. Draw your own conclusions.
Weeks later, the Chair was still insisting that “nothing fundamentally changes by dropping one letter”. For some members, that only reinforced the suspicion that the answer had been decided before the question had been asked. The group’s Executive Committee remained silent.
As a member of LGBT+ Conservatives, my concern is not that the organisation lacks a voice. It’s that the voice too often belongs to the people running it, rather than the members paying for it.
And sometimes what an organisation chooses not to say is every bit as revealing as what it does.
On issues squarely within its remit, such as Labour’s Conversion Practices Bill, the group has been conspicuously quiet. If ever there were a moment for an LGBT organisation to articulate a position, this would seem to be it.
It would be churlish not to acknowledge the good stuff. LGBT+ Conservatives has taken a clear stance against the puberty blockers trial, organised social events and supported members on the campaign trail. Credit where it’s due.
The problem is that, somewhere along the way, the group developed an identity crisis. Too often it remembered the LGBT and forgot the Conservative.
So what is the solution? As Kemi’s renewal project returns the Conservative Party to its roots, LGBT+ Conservatives should do the same. Before 2016, the previous incarnations of the group focused exclusively on LGB. It could sympathise with those experiencing gender dysphoria without insisting that sexual orientation and gender identity were the same political cause. The LGB and T were not force-teamed.
The path is already being cleared by sister right-wing groups. Conservatives for Women has championed the restoration of sex-based rights, an end to publicly funded gender ideology, and recognition of biological sex in NHS policy and data collection. Across the Atlantic, the Log Cabin Republicans recently decided to focus exclusively on LGB advocacy, dropping the T+. The precedent has been set.
Not every gay Conservative will agree with me, and nor should they. Conservatives are not a monolith. But we should at least be practising the same religion.
I remain optimistic. Kemi’s renewal project is returning the Conservative Party to reality, personal responsibility and common sense. Most of the battle has already been won. What remains is housekeeping. The direction is right; the loose ends simply need tying up. Doing so would help rebuild trust with many gay and gender-critical voters while denying Reform an issue the Conservatives should already own.