Boris said he wanted me to be his Geoff Boycott, I said I’d rather be Ian Botham
IT STARTED with a tweet. In April 2018, I tweeted in support of Mumsnet, the online forum, over their insistence on having a free discussion on transgender policy.
My view was that adults should be free to live their lives as they want. I was also clear that women were defined as biologically female.
Just under 18 months later, I got a call from an aide to the Prime Minister, asking me if I still agreed with my tweet.
I knew where this was leading. Sure enough, Boris called me himself, asking me to be equality minister.
In typical Boris fashion, he told me: ‘Liz, I want you to be a Geoffrey Boycott in this role’ — a reference to the famously cautious England cricketer of the 1970s.
I presumed this meant he wanted me to play defence on the transgender issue, hose things down and not create any trouble. That might have suited him, but I don’t really see myself as a Geoffrey Boycott figure. So I told Boris I preferred Ian Botham, the charismatic attacking cricketer who once grew so frustrated with Boycott’s negativity that he conspired with the opposition to dismiss him from the match.
Boris countered by suggesting that he saw me as more of a Ben Stokes, the modern-day England star … and so it went on.
It was somewhat surreal to be conducting a ministerial appointment through the medium of an extended cricketing metaphor, but we eventually agreed I’d step up to the crease.
I was horrified by what was going on. Some schools were teaching there are multiple genders. The police were designating some biologically male rapists as women, and the NHS had actually put out guidance about ‘chestfeeding’.
Appallingly, this was happening under a Conservative government. Whereas I was prepared to fight, too many of my Cabinet colleagues wanted to put their heads in the sand. There were even some backbench Tory MPs and advisers in No 10 who actively supported the self-ID agenda.
As I moved forward with my plans to stop self-ID, there was a barrage of leaks to the press. It became a Saturday night tradition that I’d receive a ‘WTF’ text from Boris, demanding to know why our plans had been leaked. I had to point out that as the person who wanted to get this done, it was not in my interests for this to be in the public domain.
Had he considered that one of his own advisers might have leaked the story?
Eventually I got self-ID reversed. There was a lot of support from women’s rights activists — and the predictable backlash from the Left. Slowly, the tide was turning.