Sunak to drop legal plans to bar transitioning in schools?

[D1nopawus]

FFS. Just as I start to think the grown ups are back in the room.

Rishi Sunak set to drop legal plans to bar transitioning in schools

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/31645f02-4ce5-11ee-98c9-759fff07db04?shareToken=c9611eafea6f3f775129767e94bdbb46

There are no 'appropriate transitions'. We need to let kids know that it's perfectly OK, cool even, to be as gender-nonconforming as they wish. Also that it's fine, natural and normal to be gay. And show them role models of successful non-conforming people. No need to take medications or boutique plastic surgeries to make their bodies 'fit'.

I dare say she is a good lawyer. However, when Suella Braverman was AG she gave the exact opposite advice. Sex Matters also has good lawyers on its board, and they have also given opposite advice.

At the very least, the Equality Act protections on gender reassignment are vague enough to be open to interpretation.

I'm afraid if schools are not going to have legal restrictions here (Keegan gambit), and the AG advice that restricting pupils changing gender transgresses the EA, then I can see one of two scenarios.

Parents see no guidance from central govt, either moral or legal, and will feel they'll get no help from schools (teachers, the head) and local education authorities, more and more will feel helpless in objecting to their kids transitioning. And the phenomenon gets entrenched, more and more normalised, and parents/teachers objecting more and more sidelined and silenced. And the phenomenon grows in prevalence and depth.

This, but Generation Alpha take it into their hands to stymie the trend. As said before, young teens and proto teens will see what was a wacky and colourful counter culture movement become promoted and protected at school, and rebel against the new conformity.

The latter will involve an increase in verbals and bullying, a whole group of victimised special kids, a whole bunch of suspended and expelled pupils expressing GC views, and their parents rung out as well.

All because adults in charge failed to make the right decisions when the phenomenon became visible, and then allowed so much momentum and froth, that dealing with it at a later date (ie now) is even more challenging.

Maybe it really will be the kids that will sort it out, certainly the adults seem unable (or unwilling?) to.

I'm waiting for conference season and then the manifestos

But ATM it looks as though I'll be voting for the only candidate to answer the Staniland question correctly last time (though I will ask them all again). He's a bit if an arse, but no more so than the front runners, and on this issue alone he'll probably get my vote.

@RoyalCorgi - Braverman gave advice as AG that the UK should break international law. I think that goes to her credibility and she looks to be pursing an unlawful policy on boats. Prentis is a lawyer first and a politician second. Not sure that could be said of Braverman.

My point is that to change the law is a political decision, not a legal one. Lawyers don't drive policy but their advice will show the limits or flaws. Prentis has properly checked something that would breach public law obviously, and the proper politicians need to think again.

The safeguarding of children and women aren't minor little petty things.

The political capture of taxpayer funded institutions completely against public duty including the police and civil service is not a minor little petty thing.

This is not going to go away. It is just going lead to more and bigger never ending stinking messes, with a body count. This is in itself a classic safeguarding disaster.

People know. People are talking to each other about it. No one wants to be the bad guy. No one wants to risk damaging their own interests or provoking negative reactions particularly from difficult adults involved in the situation. Everyone's hoping if they don't look directly at the problem they can pretend it's not that bad and they're praying that someone else will sort it out for them. And in the mean time, they're all busily prioritising their own needs ahead of the people they have responsibility for protecting.

Joan Smith on this in Unherd (archive link)

https://archive.ph/hNTnT

Yes, of course we need to do all of those things.
But we will also continue to have gender dysphoria clinics, hopefully operating without ideological contamination and able to offer adequate mental health diagnosis and care, unlike the Tavistock, rather than rubber-stamping transition.

No-one has suggested that a properly constituted GD clinic will never decide that an individual has a form of dysphoria for which social transition is appropriate. Perhaps they won't (and perhaps they shouldn't), but it would be a very odd kind of legislative overreach for the govt to pre-empt this possibility by banning schools from supporting transition in all cases, regardless of whether (in a tiny number of cases) the individual in question is being supervised by a properly operating GD clinic which has decided that transition is indicated.

Surely the objective should be to ensure that properly operating GD clinics, offering a properly wide range of mental health diagnoses and support, are available. And then to allow both medical and educational professionals to liaise and co-operate in relation to individual pupils where necessary, in the same way as they would for all other forms of mental ill-health.

Perhaps this will result in zero transitions, and perhaps not. But what would be the case for banning this in advance, rather than permitting appropriate professional collaboration? It isn't the role of government to decide what constitutes correct healthcare.

The role of government should be to provide schools guidance (and, where appropriate, legislation) to ensure that social transitioning doesn't happen without the medical agreement and supervision -- and also that it happens in a way that respects the rights of other children (as well as teacing staff).

Why is the political impartiality aspect of all this being ignored?
If schools were forced to comply with the actual law on remaining politically impartial then there'd be no place for Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence, Global Butterflies, Educate & Celebrate or any of the grifting queer theory soaked organisations. They're ALL political activists, all openly campaigning to remove women's rights, child safeguarding etc. That alone renders them unsuitable to be allowed to sell their beliefs in schools & to children.

Good article, thank you for sharing.

If the option is going to be a group of weak, handwringing cowards going 'yes we know it's terribly wrong and we have a responsibility to the public but what can we doooo' or a group of raving lunatics desperate to do terribly wrong things faster and bigger, I honestly can't see the point of turning out to vote. And that's the first time in my lifetime I've ever seriously thought that.

I can see your point

We haven’t really had the chance to vote on this properly at a GE

Use the manifesto to get mandate for legal changes, which would take a few years but I assume could be done

Not sure how problematic international law is

I would really need to see Prentis's reasoning. Why does she think that banning social transitioning in schools would break the law? Because it's not obvious to me.

My suspicion now is that they will just decide not to do anything at all before a general election and leave it to the next government (ie Labour) to sort out.

I’d be interested in reasoning too

Why do you think Labour will sort it rather than keep status quo or make it worse?

@EasternStandard i think you’re reading too much into it. They’ll save it for the manifesto because wavering voters vote on what a party promises to do, not on what they have done. There’s no
indication that they have any intention to
do it if re-elected. Manifesto promises aren’t worth tte paper they’re written on.

@RoyalCorgi - all I can say is that there will be an underlying legal assessment on the judicial revenue risk. It does not surprise me that Prentis reversed Braverman's advice. One has a longer and more impressive legal career than the other. Equally it's confidential.

The other thing is that there are plenty of lawyers who will say there's an argument. But the Government has a far higher standard than that to advance legislation. It has to be signed off by many lawyers in government.

You can't expect a government to legislate on a chance. Usually all of these issues are dealt with internally and then the policy is announced after all the Government is on board. That didn't happen here as saying what the policy was before it had been legally tested occurred. That's on the people who were so excited about their own position they could not set their ego aside to wait. This is a particular problem with this Government.

Hopefully the next one will go back to the usual process of stress testing in private and over a year instead of a few months.

I'm afraid if Sunak thinks he'll reel this 8x Tory voter in with a promise to resolve this after the GE, he's sorely mistaken. I'll vote for the first Independent that promises to fix potholes with a side order of happy to state Women Equals Adult Human Female.

If this precipitates Flip Flopper on gender issues into No. 10...well, that's life.

@MelodiousThunk

I’m what way am I ‘reading too much into it’? I don’t get that comment I’m pretty much agreeing with you. Yes it’s a promise and?

What you’ve said isn’t that surprising to me. Although I disagree on manifesto slightly as getting stuff past HoL can be a hurdle without it.

Good to see the true believers out in force! I'm sure, reading these posts you all believed (as did the govt) the faked, on Tik Tok, story of a child wanting to present as a cat? If a child wants to be seen as a different gender, then let them. Teachers should not be forced, as Sunak and Bedenoch want, to betray a child's trust and reveal their behaviour to their parents. Because that's what the govt are actually proposing. So, apart from spying on children for signs of 'radicalisation' not being allowed to criticise capitalism, now the 'not all interfering with school policies for political gain', govt wants teachers to report on children presenting the 'wrong' way in terms of gender. The fact that that puts children at risk with aggressively anti trans parents, well, who cares as long as the anti trans mob (and boy is that the right description) get their way, yeah? Before anyone gives out any parents know best rubbish, I can assure you, they really don't. We are all amateurs, there is no guide book, and our prejudices are all too often more important than our children's wellbeing. Whatever we may think. Teachers by contrast, and specialists in child health are professionals. They have a duty to the children, not to the parents. Once govt forces that to change, we should all beware the outcomes.

I don’t get the issue with getting people to vote on it

Has any country clearly voted on two parties presenting alternatives or has this all snuck in via civil servants, media and institutions?

We don’t even know which side people would fall on, some think people are fine with it but clearly many are not

I'm afraid all parties are broad churches. This means that no party can risk a specific line on something like GI without alienating up to half of its MPs.
Whatever you think of Brexit, any practical way forward was stymied because there was no taste for it in any party, the policy imposed on MPs.
I suspect the same would happen on outlawing gender change in schools.
The TRA Keegan-Millar-Mordaunt-May axis in the Conservative Party is stronger than we think, Maria Millar just hosted a Stonewall policy type shindig.

The way I see it this has crept in over the last few years, as it has elsewhere, it’s pushed by Stonewall and others who seem to have convinced so many organisations, half the press and civil servants and now in schools

There’s people who don’t like that and feel unelected bodies have too much control. It wasn’t voted for

Some say no you’re wrong people don’t care that much etc

So regardless of party divisions why wouldn’t those annoyed with all this welcome an actual vote?

Totally agree with all of this

Marge , clearly you haven’t read the Cass Review…

The buck stops with the government, under Conservatives , at the moment &
it is utter nonsense to expect that teachers know best, when those teachers have been undermined & gaslit by the Stonewall , LGBT Youth Scotland, etc , as well as the “teachers” who have been happily messing up children with their own weird mindset.
The PM needs to grow a spine, deal with the damage done already, and rebuild the safeguarding of children which has been disregarded by those who should know better.

Oh and PARENTS have a duty of care to their children far beyond any teacher or any blue haired alphabet people activist.
Children deserve better.

I can't see it happening. Polls are showing no traction for trans related issues, and Sunak is aware culture war tropes cut both ways. Additionally, I don't believe he has any more "feel" for the right thing as May or Starmer.

He's putting all his eggs in the Illegal Migrant Bill and a turnaround in the economy basket. Most we can expect is a promise to return to this after the GE.

I'm afraid the Tories have been asleep at the wheel for 13 years, expecting any priority or authenticity here is to expect rain to fall upwards.