Could the Prime Minister be found guilty of ‘Conversion Therapy’?

by Revd Dr Thomas Brand

At the Conservative Party Conference, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: ‘‘We shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be, they can’t. A man is a man, and a woman is a woman; that’s just common sense.’

If you’ve seen the video clips, Mr Sunak receives hearty applause twice in thirty-two seconds, and after that last sentence it came close to a standing ovation.

Imagine with me for a moment, that the ‘Conversion Practices’ ban had not been mired down by disagreements, unintended consequences and party disagreements, but that it has gone through pre-legislative scrutiny and become law.

And imagine further that, rather than making his common-sense comments in public, he had shared them with a family member who was struggling with their gender. In that instance, saying ‘people can’t be any sex they want to be’ could have found the PM facing criminal investigation.

Alarmingly, this imagined future is not from Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World. It is a likely real-life outcome of a proposed law which, as things stand today, could still be coming down the tracks.

Read more on this in my article for the Critic.

• Category: News