Kemi Badenoch has shown what she is made of by taking the fight to Labour

The week in Westminster may have been dominated by talk of the Government’s flailing Rwanda plan. But away from Robert Jenrick’s resignation as immigration minister and Suella Braverman sticking the boot in from the backbenches, Kemi Badenoch’s bravura performance in a Commons debate on transgender ideology was where the action was really to be had.

During a punchy appearance at the dispatch box on Wednesday, the Business and Trade Secretary, who is also equalities minister, confidently and persuasively fought back against some of the extreme (and often dangerous) gender ideas that have been rammed down our throats in recent years.

Naturally, she was rounded upon by colleagues and Labour MPs, and was accused of “nasty anti-LGBT+ rhetoric”.

But it is impressive that she did not allow that to shut her down. Indeed, it was her response to that serial political stirrer, Sir Chris Bryant, the Labour MP for Rhondda, that perhaps showed her true calibre as a politician.

Sir Chris, who famously had to issue a grovelling apology for wrongly saying in Parliament that Nigel Farage had been paid £548,000 by the Russian state, gave an impassioned speech in which he suggested that he feels “less safe” as a gay man than he did five years ago partly because of “the rhetoric used in the public debate” by Badenoch.

It would be appalling if Sir Chris does feel less safe, but was it really fair to blame that on Kemi Badenoch? Of course not, and her response was priceless.

Insisting that gender-affirming care for children could be seen as “a new form of conversion therapy”, she pointed to “almost an epidemic of young gay children being told that they are trans and being put on a medical pathway for irreversible decisions, and they are regretting it”.

She added: “The Hon Gentleman says that he is traumatised; we are traumatised by what is happening to young children, and we will run away from this issue no longer.”

Well said.

With Scotland’s Court of Session ruling yesterday that the UK Government acted lawfully when it blocked Nicola Sturgeon’s gender recognition reform bill, the tide appears to be turning on trans extremism.

It was her response to serial stirrer Sir Chris Bryant that perhaps showed her true calibre as a politician