33:64 presents “Gina Miller.”

If I break the law, I can reasonably expect that the law will take action against me. That, as I understood it, was part of the social contract; that individuals cede some of their liberties in the pursuit of the collective good. That everyone was expected to obey the law and that no-one was above it. However, it seems I was wrong. 

The very people who are charged with upholding and enforcing the law are breaking it. As reported last week, Staffordshire Police says its custody policy means “detainees may be placed in accommodation consistent with their gender identity”. One of the problems I have with this policy, apart from the obvious one of prioritising mens rights above women’s, is the fact that it is a revised one. Introduced the the wake of the 2025 Supreme Court ruling that sex in equality law refers to biological sex, which has been widely interpreted as meaning that biological men cannot use female single-sex facilities.

It wasn’t a ruling that wasn’t publicised. Anything but. The implications were widely discussed in the press both before and after the ruling. In fact, even the Courts ruling in 2017 that the then government couldn’t trigger Article 50 and set in motion the process leaving the EU wasn’t nearly as controversial. Because, in that instance the right verdict had been given, and the wrong people had been bested. However,  ruling that sex, in a legal sense, meant biological sex and thus wasn’t based on an individuals feelings wasn’t the right verdict 

This was abundantly clear in the reaction, or more accurately, lack of reaction, that followed the ruling.  Any UK entity which had policies determining how they provided services based upon accepting a persons self-identity, had long been in thrall to the nonsense that trans-women were women, and were not happy about it. For years, they’d assumed that they had garlanded moral superiority and unimpeachable virtuous probity because of their enthusiastic support for trans rights. To a greater or lesser degree, all of them believed that part of their identity was predicated upon how robustly they enforced that support. Now they were acting illegally and no matter how much they pretended to welcome the law, most were quietly working out ways to either circumvent it or ignore it all together.

The civil service, the NHS – both nationally and locally, schools, trade unions, have all defied the law and persist in believing in someones gender identity over biological reality. So is it really such a surprise that Staffordshire Police have done the same? Not really. It’s nothing more than a modern update on the ‘I was only following orders’ excuse so beloved of Nazi concentration camp guards to absolve themselves from the horror that they perpetrated. 

Because thats what ‘the correct procedures and policies were followed’, essentially means. As long as the rules were followed, it matters not how illegal those rules are, the important thing is that they are followed. Process, procedure and policy, becomes the law. The Equality Act ruling exists far away from the places where people actually work, its enforcement is dependant upon people who imagine that trans-women are women. The defence of single-sex spaces rests with people who believe that sex is a choice.

If the law becomes like a buffet, where one can choose which laws to abide by or ignore depending on personal preference, then is it really the law? If the people who are charged with enforcing it can flout it so brazenly does it cease to be applicable to everyone? Or has it become optional? Which would be weirdly appropriate, seeing as how now individual choice has now become more important than any notion of objective reality.