JK Rowling might finally talk some sense into Alastair Campbell
I was later than some to wake up to the inherent dangers posed to women and girls by gender ideology. But much earlier than others.
One ex-cabinet minister who was in the Commons at the same time as I asked me just recently to give him a run-through of the issue and why it was so controversial; until then he was extraordinarily ignorant of the bones of contention, such as male-sexed rapists being sent to women’s prisoners and males cheating women of their sports medals by claiming to be “women born in the wrong body”.
Even he seems to have been enlightened far earlier than Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s ex-communications chief and now half of the presenting team of The Rest Is Politics, one of the country’s most popular podcasts. Campbell this week offered an olive branch to the writer JK Rowling after she criticised him for not paying close enough attention to the trans issue until recently, when Donald Trump’s re-election brought a new focus on the issue for progressives.
Inviting the Harry Potter author onto his podcast to discuss it, Campbell told her via X: “I do think the debate could do with a little less polarisation and a little more attempt at understanding.”
I bow to no man in my admiration for Campbell’s ability to promote the point of view of any cause or government. Judging from this interaction, however, he is less skilled at reading the room. For a man – any man – to ignore an issue as emotive as this one and then only dip a toe in the treacherous waters by telling an experienced campaigner for women’s rights that she might want to tone it down a bit was exceptionally crass. A perfect example of mansplaining, one might even suggest.
Interestingly, Campbell’s podcasting co-host, former Tory MP and minister, Rory Stewart, has had his own brush with the subject, revealing in 2020 that when he was a justice minister, he had been informed of incidents where male inmates claiming to be trans had assaulted and raped female prison officers. He has not, as far as I’m aware, explained why such revelations did not prompt an emergency statement to the House and a wholesale and permanent reversal of the practice by which men claiming to be trans were imprisoned on the women’s estate.
As I write it looks unlikely that Rowling will accept Campbell’s offer to be a guest on his podcast. I get why: Rowling was once trolled by Campbell’s daughter, Grace Campbell, a would-be comedian who once took to Twitter to criticise Rowling as a “terf” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist – an insult, apparently) and in their brief interaction, Alastair Campbell assured the author that “I am more influenced by the two most important women in my life [one of whom is his daughter] than any man.” “Oh, I believe you,” retorted Rowling drily, posting a screenshot of Campbell Jr’s insult.
But if she refuses to appear, I think she would be making a mistake.
Thanks partly to Trump and thanks partly to the army of brave women who have risked their careers, reputations and personal safety by challenging gender ideology in institutions right across the country, the threat from trans activists to women’s privacy, safety and sports has never been more high-profile.
Have you ever wondered how a philosophy founded on such flimsy and contra-logical assertions such as “transwomen are women” came to be taken seriously by some of the most senior figures in the land? How on earth did an ideology founded on anti-science tomfoolery, smacking of washed-up academics in Ivy league universities looking around for something – anything – that would attract some attention and assure their employers they were still worth employing, manage to capture the educational, local and national government institutions, including the civil service?
I now know the answer to that fascinating conundrum: it happened because most of us were looking the other way. It happened because the ideology’s publicly-funded proselytisers understood that, sunshine being the best disinfectant, it was best to keep it well away from the window sill.
It happened through the blithe assumption that it was the most natural part of a human resources handbook, not even entertaining the possibility that its more obvious contradictions and consequences might be questioned or challenged. And hey presto! You have captured every institution with barely a parliamentary question having to be answered.
Why do you think its advocates insist on “no debate”? Because they’re so confident in their theological tenets that debate would hardly have any point? No, because when even the easier, more obvious questions start to be asked, the whole edifice crumbles into dust.
That’s what has happened in the United States. One post-polling survey concluded that Kamala Harris’s and her running mate Tim Walz’s lifelong trans activism and obsession with culture issues was the top reason for Americans to vote for Trump. “Kamala is for they/them, Donald Trump is for you” ran a particularly effective online ad.
But it could only happen across the pond because politicians were finally willing to talk about it; the willingness of the public to listen and to ask their own questions was never in doubt. But there and here, politicians across the political spectrum have managed the debate so tightly – acting as gatekeepers, effectively – that even when female prison staff are raped by men pretending to be women, the issue gets barely a mention in Hansard.
That gatekeeping is coming to an end as British politicians wake up to what those many women have been saying and campaigning on for years. And with every beam of sunlight, the trans tyranny comes closer to an end.
JK Rowling’s invitation to appear on Alastair Campbell’s podcast does not mean that Campbell and his co-presenter are allowing a freer debate; the invitation was issued as a response to a growing awareness among hosts and listeners that this ideology may, after all, have some serious negative repercussions on women.
Her acceptance would generate unprecedented levels of interest in the growing podcast industry and undoubtedly spill into every other area of media, legacy and new. And by definition, that can only benefit the campaign of women who want to put girls’ and women’s safety, spaces and sports ahead of the feelings of a tiny minority of men.
Rowling should accept that invitation.