Britain’s first transgender peer moves a step closer

YOU’D be hard-pressed to claim that the House of Lords is an incubator for innovation.

But it broke new ground yesterday when Lord Simon of Wythenshawe, 67 — a transgender woman, born as Matthew and now called Matilda Simon — was added to the list of candidates for by-elections to the Lords, held when one of the 92 hereditary peers dies.

‘That makes her the first transgender candidate,’ Lucy Dargahi, Lord Speaker’s communications adviser, tells me.

Matilda’s success follows a decision by the Lord Chancellor, who ruled that her claim for inclusion on the list was legitimate.

If, in due course, Matilda wins a by-election, she will surely be the envy of those daughters of hereditary peers who are disqualified from inheriting their fathers’ titles by dint of their sex — almost all of them, in other words.