General election is the light at the end of the tunnel
AFTER the local polls on Thursday, we may edge nearer to knowing the date of the general election. It will be the light at the end of the tunnel for those who are chucked out or elected.
This sluggish parliament will become a fading memory of when a Prime Minister so feared his own MPs that he ensured they were rarely together in parliament. The stunning defection to Labour of a senior Conservative MP illustrates why Sunak has cause to be worried that the light at the end of his own tunnel may arrive sooner than for others.
Most of us just want to get the general election over and done. It would hasten a new democratic journey, albeit in economic and international conditions that are more dangerous than for decades.
But there will be some continuity as critical issues are resolved in a new parliament. One of these has been the long-standing problem of the power cables that straddle the River Tyne. The problem is straightforward. The overhanging cables stop ships with tall freight from reaching the North Sea.
This prevents eager regional companies adding value to the vital offshore wind sector, which could play a vital role in diversifying the energy mix to fuel our homes and economy.
Our companies could also create perhaps thousands of wellpaying and quality jobs which increase the tax base and consumer spending. It’s a win-win all round and yet ministers have dragged their feet.
I keep raising this and can report that persistence with ministers has finally kick-started action. The regulator is undertaking a £10 million development study to identify how to remove the cables and how that can be funded. The study will take some months and then goes back to a new minister after the election.
Another quite different issue is the complex and often toxic question of transgender politics, about which I have received heartfelt representations from constituents.
For adults, it is relatively simple. Adults can choose how
they live their lives, provided they cause no harm to others, and that means protecting women-only spaces and fairness in women’s sports. The author and philanthropist JK Rowling rightly says: “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security.”
It’s entirely different for children, however. In recent years there has been a massive increase in children, mainly girls, seeking a trans identity.
The government commissioned a major report by Dr Hilary Cass, a respected and former President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. Her massive report took four years to complete and comprehensively and compassionately exposed the shortcomings and lack of evidence for this trend to physical transition as the answer to complex problems.
Cass argues this is caused by a complex interplay between biological, psychological and social factors which is different in each individual and at different times.
Many have conditions including Autism, ADHD, eating disorders, anxiety or experience of sexual abuse or are likely to become same sex attracted.
The problem is that many have been wrongly and carelessly affirmed, on remarkably weak evidence, in their belief that physical transition will solve their problems, even if they don’t have the ability as children to understand the impact on their adult bodies and minds of irreversible drugs and surgery.
Our children deserve individual and holistic treatment and that will now be the clinical norm. The Cass review is now the informed and rightly cautious policy consensus between the two main parties, whoever wins the election, and that is excellent news for troubled teenagers.
As we all leave the dark tunnel of the last few years, there will be many other neglected and new questions that deserve robust and long-term answers with a government seeking to act for the common good. It cannot come too soon.
■ Mary Glindon is the Labour MP for North Tyneside.