First trans peer a step closer as hereditary candidate claims seat

as modern as they need to be to avoid daughters getting their hands on what belongs to the boys!

Yep.

Repeal the bloody GRA. It was a badly made and very stupid law, that has caused absolute bloody havoc, has successfully harmed women's rights and equalities to a really staggering and unprecedented degree in decades, and has the potential to cause way more harm than this.

Exactly.

Isn't it funny how it's always a straight forward sex based, heads male people win and tails female people lose?

However, from what I've read about the lobbying process that led up to the GRA, the activists who'd been pushing for something like this for a while never intended to stop there.

It would at this point be ridiculously and stupidly naive to believe that the current goals are intended to stop there either. Every inch is just the thin end of the wedge, it has been proved over and over again.

Repeal the bloody GRA. It was a badly made and very stupid law, that has caused absolute bloody havoc, has successfully harmed women's rights and equalities to a really staggering and unprecedented degree in decades, and has the potential to cause way more harm than this.

Remember who signs off these laws ....

That sounds suspiciously modern for the hereditaries.

Whilst it is outrageous that this individual want his cake and eat it, in this case I would say the bigger outrage is the fact that a portion of government explicitly excludes women.

Good article from Sam Leith in The Spectator: www.spectator.co.uk/article/should-a-trans-woman-inherit-a-peerage-over-their-older-sister-?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=LNCH%20%2020220523%20%20House%20Ads%20%20KA+CID_e563ac3b9e18fc19a7b35705a411eba9

This is fascinating. It's like the single sex exemptions but in another sphere of life. Our class system might be the one thing that has stopped us from going Full Canada on this issue.

if contested, hereditary titles are done on DNA

Well, that is interesting.

Do you mean many aristocrats didn't want anyone taking a close look at their children's DNA? I wonder why not...

this is an incredibly niche topic but i've been trying to change the law for 7 years on this. The GRA exemption was because hereditary (male obvs) peers were worried daughters would claim to be men to game the system and inherit over their legit brothers.
but they also had to be exempt because if contested, hereditary titles are done on DNA. and of course you can't change your DNA 😉

Lammy of the 'hoarding rights' fame?

Woman in the bed chamber
Man in the voting chamber

Assuming with that background Matilda would want to stand for a Labour peerage, it could be quite a wait, as there are only two - a Peer can only be elected to replace one of the same party and the number reflects the party allegiances of the hereditarys when the Act was passed.

There are some Peers elected into specific roles by the whole House, but only two of them are Labour.

This means that the only time there has been a by election for a replacement Labour hereditary peer, the electorate was 3. 11 stood. It’s a fairly hilarious procedure in and of itself, but it will leave whoever that tiny group of Peers is (would look it up if not on phone) open to a high level of intense lobbying.

Tbh I don't think David Lammy held a personal torch for hereditary peers. He was told to bang through this law by any means necessary, and I doubt it was pleasant. I remember thinking early in his career that he was given a huge number of hospital passes in his work and I do wonder if there was a racist element to it - subconsciously that ministers were asking him to jump through more hoops than most junior ministers?

Blimey - Lammy on the side of the real rights-hoarding dinosaurs there!

Oh of course no one would want to defeat the expectations of aristocratic men.

No problems at all with defeating the expectations of common (not aristocratic) women. What do we matter? What do our feelings or expectations matter? What does our safety matter?

The 2004 debate in the House of Commons. Proposed by David Lammy and Labour put a three line whip on it. Lynne Jones (Lab) pushes hard for new birth certificates.
David Lammy looking after the patriarchy. www.theyworkforyou.com/pbc/2003-04/Gender_Recognition_Bill/06-0_2004-03-16a.5.0
"It recognises the unique nature of peerages, dignity and titles of honour in that they descend according to birth. The terms of descent cannot be changed and the expectations of the persons entitled by birth may be defeated if the acquired gender of a sibling were to count in the way that the hon. Gentleman outlined."

But it's like the prisons debate. The answer from the further left is to abolish prisons rather than argue about who is placed where, that it proves that talking about sex is talking about oppressive structures that need dismantling. Likewise basing any argument on who gets a hereditary peerage only proves that we're dinosaurs and that the GRA is outdated.

It is true that I believe in a free society what sex you are wouldn't make much difference to your life. I do think we're much further along that road than was the case in the past, due mostly to technology. It's no doubt explainable why this suddenly means that having a sex is suddenly both a trauma and legally/physically malleable for a growing group of people.

I'd have the hereditaries any day over some of the washed up never-was-a-beans who've been handed peerages over the years. Lord Sewell being but one example.

And who pushed for this to remain when the GRA was enacted? I would love to see the FOI on that.

Nothing. The law is explicit in this case, isn't it? Women can't change sex.

Same. It seemed very hypothetical and a bit of a gotcha.

Yet it’s happened so quickly.

Or is it that they can imagine women pretending but not men?

Bingo! Men can’t possibly be accused of dishonest motives but women are sneaky and underhand.