THE REST IS (GENDER) POLITICS

Why Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart need to do their homework

Last year, I wrote a long Substack post analysing the transcript of Rory Stewart’s and Alastair Campbell’s discussion of the Supreme Court ruling on their Rest is Politics podcast. That previous post is available here, but I’m sharing an updated and much shortened version with a few extracts of their most questionable claims because it seems relevant to the current debate, which has been revived by the first anniversary of the ruling. Here’s the link to the previous post:

Background

This ruling was the outcome of a case initially brought by three Scottish women who had concerns about Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill. The women formed the campaigning group For Women Scotland, which went through a protracted crowd-funded legal process to defend the legal status of biological sex. They finally won their appeal in the Supreme Court in 2025. The Supreme Court ruling clarified that, under the Equality Act 2010, biological sex and not gender identity is a protected characteristic for the purposes of access to single-sex services and facilities. To be clear, this was a clarification of an existing law. It did not take away any legally-specified trans persons’ rights, which enjoy full protection under the law in this country, though not in the US. There’s a good interview with Susan Smith, one of the founders of For Women Scotland, on BBC Woman’s Hour at this link:

Last week, the first anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling was the catalyst for a viral spat on X/Twitter between gender-critical feminists and Alastair Campbell, because of Campbell’s comments on last year’s Rest is Politics podcast.

J.K. Rowling and Alastair Campbell have gone head to head:

Many have pointed out that Campbell seems to get all his “knowledge” about gender politics from his comedian daughter Grace. In that 2025 podcast, he acknowledges his opinions have “been informed by Grace my daughter and her friends, almost all of whom I think just found this judgment really quite alarming and dangerous.”

Alastair Campbell’s Source of Information

So let’s see where Alastair Campbell gets his information from. Here’s his daughter Grace in conversation with trans woman Charlie Craggs.

They mock the women celebrating outside the Supreme Court after the ruling, laughing and shouting “freaks”, “ugly” (shouting together); “with the worst hair and the worst clothes,” (Campbell); “and the worst views” (Craggs – echoed by Campbell); “and they’re not aspirational in any way. I don’t want to be anywhere near them in a room” (Campbell); “put me in the men’s, I can handle it and I can handle your husbands. I will give your husbands what they are not getting at home with you, with your ugly haircuts,” (Craggs, on not being allowed to use women’s toilets); “I hate the smugness on these women’s faces” (Campbell); “I don’t even like women … Look at me, and look at all those women outside the Supreme Court. You think I’m interested in them? If that’s their hair up there, what do you think it’s saying down there, girlie” (gesturing towards their crotch, to giggling hilarity from Campbell). There is also much mockery and disinformation about J.K. Rowling; claims that trans women have never been a real threat to women, etc. All these claims are easily disprovable by checking the facts, but when did truth and facts ever get in the way of misogyny and mockery?

This juvenile wittering would be of no interest or significance, if it didn’t suggest that Alastair Campbell’s views on gender politics come more from his daughter’s prejudices than from any attempt to inform himself.

The Rest is (Gender) Politics Podcast

In what follows, AC and RS refer to Alastair and Rory respectively, and my interventions are in boxed italics. I’m only singling out a few of their claims.

AC: I think then we should talk about this Supreme Court ruling in the UK seeking to answer the question what is a woman which it is claimed has brought clarity to the debate. I’m afraid I don't think it’s brought clarity to this debate at all.

The judgement makes clear that the definition of “man” and “woman” pertains to clarification of the Equality Act 2010. It is not a generalised attempt “to answer the question what is a woman”:

From the Supreme Court Ruling:

2. It is not the role of the court to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex, nor is it to define the meaning of the word “woman” other than when it is used in the provisions of the EA 2010. It has a more limited role which does not involve making policy.

RS: This is very much a debate in the States where most people on the progressive left are on the side of transgender, and most of the opposition to transgender comes from the conservative right. Britain is very unusual because it’s in Britain that you have figures like JK Rowling and others, who are feminists from the left who are strongly opposed to what they see as the excesses of transgender ideology. So this whole dynamic doesn’t exist here, and actually explaining to an American audience why left-wing progressive feminists like JK Rowling or Kathleen Stock are troubled by transgender ideology is actually quite difficult.

This is spot on from Rory, and an important distinction with regard to socio-political differences between the US and the UK, which have widened considerably under Trump’s repressive rulings.

AC: Do you understand it because, you know, I get the thing about women feeling they want quote “safe spaces”.

Why the scare quotes around safe spaces? This “feeling” is based on abundant evidence that women and children are at growing risk of abuse, sexual violence and extreme pornography by male perpetrators, and patterns of violence for transwomen are the same as those for men. For relevant statistics, please see the For Women Scotland factsheet.

AC: One of the most moving things I was at last year, Fiona and I did an event for a company, we were talking about mental health. And on the same day on the same platform, there was a guy who’s a trans man, so somebody who had been a woman, now a man, working in this place, who gave a presentation. And it was just really moving how everybody accepted it. Nobody saw it really as that big a deal.

I suspect the event Alastair describes had an elite, liberal-minded audience, so I wonder why he was so moved. Was he expecting somebody to jump to their feet and object? It is not “that big a deal” to have a trans man speaking at an event, and this kind of anecdotal evidence doesn’t constitute an argument.

AC: … and this is the problem with this judgment is that it’s being taken as a woman, is only, you know, you cannot change your sex, is essentially what people are saying out of this.

You cannot change your sex. Fact.

AC: Let’s be honest, the British debate around trans is pretty vile, pretty noxious, pretty toxic. And you just had to see. So there’s the judge saying nobody should take this as a victory one side over the other. Cut to shots of lots of women popping champagne corks, pictures of JK Rowling smoking a celebrity cigar.

Shall we cut to shots of trans activists in UK cities, protesting against the Supreme Court ruling?

RS: My sense is that there are two completely different positions here. There’s the position of the trans community, which is that you are somebody who’s biologically born male but you identify as a woman, or you’re biologically born a woman, you identify as a man. Although that second category doesn't really feature in this debate oddly. Very little of this debate is about people who are born women who identify as men. It’s almost all the other direction is where the controversy is.

It’s not odd at all, given that this debate is led by women who are concerned about the implications for women’s safety, privacy, and rights if “woman” becomes an identity that allows anatomical males to demand full recognition and inclusion as women. Trans men (who are biologically female) are not a threat to women. They have no significant advantages in women’s sports, they are not implicated in crimes of sexual violence, and they have had different social and cultural conditioning from males. The surge in adolescent girls identifying as trans or non-binary raises questions about misogyny, body-shaming, social media, etc. which we should be addressing.

RS: A trans woman, somebody biologically male who identifies as a woman, would want to have all the rights and access and opportunities that would normally be granted to a woman because they identify as a woman. On the other side, on the JK Rowling, Kathleen Stock side, you have people saying that women’s rights were very very hard fought for, and that the rights, accesses, protections and opportunities for women should not be eroded by creating an ambiguous blur around the edges of who’s a woman and who isn’t, because it might allow men to be able to claim some of the access, opportunities, protection of women without being women. …

My position would be okay, this is a very difficult question of two competing claims of identity and rights, so let’s try to find practical compromises. So, you know, in the Rory Stewart world I would say, trans women should not be able to compete in women’s sports. Seems to me unfair. I would probably be in favour of gender neutral bathrooms in many contexts to get around this issue, right.

I would also be in favour of looking at a case-by-case basis on a trans woman wanting to go into the female estate in a prison, because you have to balance the fact that trans women are at a lot of threat. I mean, you just pointed this out, right, if you go into a male bathroom and you’re a trans woman and you’re wearing a skirt, you can be beaten up by a man in that bathroom or you could, in a prison, you could be very badly treated by fellow prisoners.

So why aren’t we all talking about the problem of misogyny and male violence? Women are not the cause of the problem and shouldn’t be expected to provide the solution. Men are the problem, and men must address this by challenging aggressive behaviour and protecting vulnerable people who enter their spaces, including trans women.

RS: You could also theoretically, although there actually aren't that many cases of it, but it has happened, you could pose a threat to women. So I would be trying to argue that you look at this on a case-by-case basis and you try to navigate your way through these very difficult claims of values.

Statistics obtained under freedom of information requests show that, if anything, trans women are over-represented among those imprisoned for sexual offences compared with men. The figures are too small to be taken as firm evidence, but they show that trans women pose the same threat as men to women inmates in prisons, as borne out by a letter to The Times from former Prison Service Area Manager Nick Pascoe CBE:

Here is what Rory Stewart said in a 2020 interview with GQ magazine:

AC: If you look at some of the rhetoric around this, this is essentially saying there’s no such thing as a trans person. If you’re born a woman you’re a woman for the rest of your life. You’re born a man, you’re a man for the rest of your life.

The judgement is not saying that “there's no such thing as a trans person”. It goes to some lengths to affirm that trans people have not lost any rights they previously had, and are fully protected from discrimination and harassment under law:

From the Supreme Court Judgement:

(20) Why this interpretation would not be disadvantageous to or remove protection from trans people with or without a GRC.

248. Finally, we have concluded that a biological sex interpretation would not have the effect of disadvantaging or removing important protection under the EA 2010 from trans people (whether with or without a GRC).

RS: It’s partly formed for me by a good friend of mine who was biologically a woman but doesn’t identify as a woman. And they find this issue both something that's very personal but also central to their work, because they run a clinic which works to provide puberty blockers for young people, young people who are often suicidal, who feel that they desperately need support in protecting their gender identity, who don’t want to transition into a gender that they feel doesn’t belong to them and feels that they’re doing work which matters deeply to them personally in their own identity, but also to some very vulnerable people. But at the same time that’s balanced with the fact that as the Tavistock report showed, there are many complexities around why people want to transition and how you back the evidence on the risk of suicide against the evidence, the damage that might be done for inappropriately blocking somebody’s development, and how parents play into this and how social media plays into this.

More anecdotal evidence based on one example. If we formed all our opinions from personal anecdotes we’d go round in circles. I could write pages about conversations I’ve had with lesbian friends, worried parents, young women, and some gay men, about their concerns and vulnerabilities.

But more importantly, reliable research questions the link between reduction in suicidality and gender transitioning. Parents have been bullied into accepting puberty blockers with the question, “Would you rather have a trans child or a dead child?” More and more public bodies are warning against careless use of the language of suicide as a justification for gender-affirming care. The latest and most reliable study to date, published by Finnish researchers in April 2026 concludes:

RS: I think it’s a classic example of something which has become very, very complicated, which is for many people very niche. I mean, you often get bad policies when you’re dealing with something which I guess probably 85% of the British public doesn’t have much of a view on, doesn’t think about very much.

AC: During the last election if you looked at the polling on the issues that people felt were important to them, and it wasn’t asking about their voting intentions, just the issues that were important to them. Trans was very, very low down, very low down the the pecking order. I do think we have a media that’s made the most of it. We now have a president in the United States who wants to make the most of it, and who actually even in his acceptance speech did a big thing about, you know, there are only two sexes, You’re either a man or you’re a woman, and let’s get these sports people out and and all that stuff. So weaponizing, if you like.

If most people were unconcerned, then Trump would not have been able to weaponise this by moving into a space vacated by the Democrats. His cynical exploitation of people’s concerns about some of these issues is an indictment of so-called progressives for not recognising the extent to which ordinary people do have legitimate concerns. We all have skin in this, and I do not know a single family that hasn’t been affected by this issue in one way or another, whether they are “affirming” or critical of their trans or non-binary children or spouses. The truth is, most of the concerns are expressed by women, and when have women’s opinions ever counted as politically significant (unless they’re trans women)?

AC: So when I see Keir Starmer today saying I think this is great, this has all been cleared up, I’m sorry, I don't think it has been cleared up and I think ultimately Parliament is going to have to another look at this at some point.

The women won so let’s go back to Parliament and make sure the men win next time.

AC: Now I know we’re both going to get, from various angles we’re going to get absolutely sort of lacerated, but I do feel strongly. … I think trans people have enough on their plate without also constantly being thrown into the middle of a political debate, the heat of which does not necessarily get us to the right place.

Spare us the pity party Alastair!

I’ve included links for all my claims, so that if Rory and Alastair want to dig deeper and be more informed, they can do so. That might not change their minds, but it would strengthen their arguments.