Bridget Phillipson has finally approved new government guidance confirming that sex is biological under the Equality Act 2010. This comes after more than a year of dithering, “consultations” and apparent confusion over what a woman is.
The Women and Equalities Minister, apparently having snapped back to reality, said the ruling had “made it clear that sex means biological sex” under the Equality Act, and that “trans people remain protected under gender reassignment provisions, but a Gender Recognition Certificate does not alter someone’s biological sex for the purposes of the Act.”
Ms. Phillipson even declined to release the guidance during the recently concluded local elections, reportedly claiming it could influence voting. Labour lost heavily anyway, so the delay appears to have achieved little beyond prolonging the confusion.
The updated Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) guidance follows the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in April 2025, which confirmed that the words “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex. The 300-page code, covering protected characteristics including age, sex, disability, race and gender reassignment, has been updated in full for the first time since 2011.
It advises organisations to apply the law to single-sex spaces. Under the guidance, hospitals are permitted to provide female-only wards based on biological sex “for women patients to protect their safety, privacy and dignity”.
If they do, it has to be on the basis of the sex that patients were assigned at birth. “trans” patients would be placed on a ward based on the sex they were born as, rather than the gender with which they identify, while public services are instructed to apply single-sex provisions accordingly.
A Long Wait for the Obvious
The truly remarkable part is not the guidance itself, but how long it took Labour to approve it. The EHRC reportedly submitted the draft guidance to ministers in September 2025. From there, it appears to have disappeared into the same hole where inconvenient biological facts often go to die.
Ms Phillipson eventually emerged to announce, with all the enthusiasm of someone reading out a parking fine, that she had “approved the draft code”. Apparently, this required extraordinary political courage. After all, this is the same Labour Party that spent years insisting men could become women through paperwork, self-identification or sufficient levels of activist intimidation. One almost sympathises with ministers. Reversing course after years of ideological theatre cannot be easy.
In 2024, she suggested that trans-identifying men with male anatomy should be able to use female toilets under Labour’s approach. Later, she defended the use of “Mx” titles for non-binary teachers before quietly rowing back.
The timing, however, is difficult to ignore. Bridget is widely regarded as a close ally of Sir Keir Starmer, who is currently attempting to steady a deeply bruised Labour Party following disastrous local election results and growing speculation about his leadership.
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The Timing
Conveniently, the guidance now lands just as political attention turns towards Andy Burnham and the Makerfield by-election. Andy Burnham’s previous comments on gender ideology are well documented. In 2022, he stated that biological men identifying as women should be allowed to use female toilets and described support for genuinely single-sex spaces as a “minority view”. In unearthed footage obtained by the Daily Mail, Mr Burnham also said the idea that single-sex spaces should be exclusive to biological women was a “minority view”. Those remarks were made before the Supreme Court ruling demolished much of the legal foundation underpinning activist gender politics.
Now Mr Burnham’s opponents have fresh ammunition. Suddenly, Labour politicians who once treated biology as an offensive social construct are being forced to defend old statements against newly published government guidance saying the exact opposite.
What extraordinary timing. Westminster remains the only place where political backstabbing can masquerade as administrative procedure.
“Keir Was Daft”
Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, said today: “I suspect there is more to the timing of the new guidance than Bridget Phillipson simply having been shamed into issuing it after dragging her feet for a year and a month after the Supreme Court judgment in April 2025 that sex is biological, rather than ‘chosen’ or ‘assigned’, and eight months after the EHRC presented it to her in September 2025.
“Ms Phillipson is known to be an ally of Keir Starmer. And whatever he says in public, I suggest Sir Keir does not want to be remembered as the shortest-serving Labour prime minister. If that is correct, he would rather Labour lose the Makerfield by-election than win it, with him then being ousted as Labour leader by Andy Burnham later this year.
“The newly published guidance gives Mr Burnham’s by-election opponents extra ammunition to draw attention to his previous pro-trans silliness. Keir was daft as well, three years ago, implying that 0.1% of women have male anatomy. But this by-election is not about electing Keir, it’s about electing Andy. And that is what Keir Starmer does not want. We should never underestimate the capacity of politicians to stab each other in the back.”
Keir Starmer’s ‘Evolving’ Position
The BBC reminds us that ‘In March 2022, when he was leader of the opposition, Sir Keir told The Times that “a woman is a female adult, and in addition to that transwomen are women, and that is not just my view – that is actually the law”. “But it turned out, it wasn’t.” In April 2025, after the Supreme Court judgment, “Asked if Sir Keir still believed that a transgender woman was a woman, the PM’s official spokesman said:
“No, the Supreme Court judgment has made clear that when looking at the Equality Act, a woman is a biological woman … That is set out clearly by the court judgment”.
The BBC continued: ‘In 2023, Sir Keir told The Sunday Times that for “99.9%” of women “of course they haven’t got a penis”.’ Which meant that 0.1%, or one in a thousand, had. But to have male genitalia, it is necessary to have XY chromosomes, which makes that person a man, not a woman.
Not Momentum, But Endurance
There’s a growing sense that Keir Starmer’s premiership has entered a defining phase, not of momentum, but of endurance. The shortest-serving Labour prime minister in modern history was Gordon Brown, who lasted 2 years and 318 days in office.
On 4 July 2026, Keir Starmer will reach the two-year mark in Downing Street. That leaves him needing to survive until June 2027 to avoid slipping into the history books as Labour’s shortest-serving modern prime minister.
The political significance is not just about dates — it is about stability, authority and public confidence. When a government reaches the point where its leadership is being measured against survival milestones rather than achievement, it signals deeper questions about direction and durability.
In simple terms, the benchmark is now set: match or exceed Gordon Brown’s time in office or risk being remembered as another short chapter in this government’s turbulent leadership history.
Don’t Ask Questions
Yet even within the new guidance, the contradictions remain. While organisations are told to apply single-sex rules based on biological sex, staff are also advised that it may not be “practical or appropriate” to challenge individuals suspected of using the wrong facilities.
Businesses are expected to maintain women-only spaces while simultaneously avoiding awkward questions about who is entering them. Public bodies are encouraged to provide gender-neutral alternatives, but not necessarily to confront obvious breaches of single-sex provisions directly.
Across Britain, hospitals have continued to allow “trans-identifying” biological males to use women-only spaces such as wards, changing rooms and lavatories. Nurses like those from Darlington have been forced to fight expensive legal battles to ensure access to single-sex changing rooms. A mother in Yorkshire had to sue her daughter’s all-girls school after it “secretly” admitted a boy who identified as female.
It is welcome that the newly published guidance will mean that “trans women” can be barred from female toilets, changing facilities and sports teams. But this must be little comfort to the women who, over the past 12 months, have suffered fear and indignity after being denied single-sex spaces.
A Culture Finally Hitting the Wall
What makes this moment politically significant is not merely the publication of guidance. It is the wider collapse of a cultural consensus that dominated British institutions for years.
The activist language surrounding “gender identity”, “chosen sex” and “assigned at birth” once moved effortlessly through government departments, schools, hospitals, universities and corporate HR offices. Anyone questioning it risked professional or social punishment. Now ministers who previously embraced those ideas are hurriedly rediscovering biology after the courts intervened.
The deeper question is why it required a Supreme Court judgment, years of legal battles and mounting public anger for the Government to acknowledge something most people understood long before Westminster did.
For all the triumphant language surrounding this guidance, many women will reasonably ask why they were forced to wait so long for protections that should never have been controversial in the first place.
Over The Pond
At the same time Britain cautiously rediscovers biological reality, parts of the West continue accelerating in the opposite direction. In Colorado, the state Supreme Court recently restored gender-transition treatments for minors despite mounting international concern over irreversible medical interventions involving children.
The Colorado Supreme Court voted 5-2 on Monday to temporarily restore “gender transitions” for minors at Children’s Hospital Colorado (CHC), rebuffing the Trump administration’s threats to cut off federal funds to medical institutions that subject children to life-altering and potentially irreversible procedures.
In January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring federal healthcare dollars to any medical institution involved in transitioning minors. But according to a Daily Caller report published that March, CHC was one of more than 30 hospitals defying the order.
This past January, CHC finally suspended all such treatments after a review by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) finding so-called “gender-affirming care” to be “neither safe nor effective”, prompting lawsuits from LGBT activists and like-minded state attorneys general.
Colorado Passes Bill on Abortion Pills on College Campuses
The Colorado legislature has sent to Democrat Gov. Jared Polis legislation that would mandate that universities in the state offer abortion pills, regardless of whether they are public or private institutions.
HB26-1335 requires any higher educational institution with a student health centre or pharmacy to distribute abortion “medication” onsite and requires any that does not to “either submit a prescription for abortion medication to a pharmacy located off campus or dispense abortion medication through the institution’s student health centre if permitted by the student health centre’s licensure.”
The bill exempts schools with conflicting “bona fide religious beliefs or practices” (potentially leaving open the danger of the state deciding for itself what it does and does not consider religious enough to qualify) but explicitly applies to private institutions as well as those operated or funded by the state, a significant expansion of presumed government authority.
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Read and pray
READ: Gen 1:27; Gen 1:27; Exod 20:13; Lev 19:32; Deut 30:19; 1 Sam 2:3; 2Sam 23:3; Psalm 82:3–4; Prov 14:12, 31:8–9; Isa 1:17
PRAY: Thank God for the Supreme Court ruling and for the growing recognition of biological reality in law and public life.
Pray that government leaders, courts, and institutions will uphold truth, justice, and policies that protect women and children.
Pray that Christians will stand firm in biblical truth with wisdom, compassion, and boldness despite cultural pressure.
Pray for those struggling with gender confusion, that they would receive compassionate support, truth, peace, and restoration.
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