MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Zealots will never admit theyre wrong

Fanatics never give up. They are so convinced that they are right and good, and that everyone else is wrong and bad, that a mere Supreme Court ruling against them barely gives them pause.

This is so with the transgender rights enthusiasts who are still numerous and influential in the upper levels of the Labour Party and the radical movement it supports.

As The Mail on Sunday reports today, actual ministers are openly organising a hostile response to the court decision that a woman must be defined by objective biology, not by a subjective judgment.

It is women, including many radical and Left-wing women, who have been the fiercest opponents of the trans campaign. One of the militants’ main targets is the commendably rational Baroness Falkner, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Lady Falkner is hardly a crusted reactionary from Tory Clubland. 

She is a former Liberal Democrat with impeccably radical credentials. But transgender rights militants were appalled by her swift, sensible acceptance that the court ruling means trans women may not use single-sex female facilities or compete in women’s sports.

The transgender rights enthusiasts are still numerous and influential in the upper levels of the Labour Party and the radical movement it supports. Pictured: Thousands of transgender people and their supporters stage a protest march in Westminster yesterday

actual ministers are openly organising a hostile response to the court decision that a woman must be defined by objective biology, not by a subjective judgment. Pictured: Home Office Minister Dame Angela Eagle (left) and Sir Chris Bryant (right)

One of the militants’ main targets is the commendably rational Baroness Falkner, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Lady Falkner is hardly a crusted reactionary from Tory Clubland

There are parts of the Labour manifesto which might be read to suggest that the court had gone too far. But few of Labour’s actual voters can actually think so. The general delight with which the judgment was received reflected a growing public exasperation with the transgender rights cause.

This movement is incomprehensible to millions, and disliked by most of those who do understand it. What sort of world do these zealots live in, where it is necessary to deny the blazingly obvious, and to fight against what is reasonable? They should recognise that they have been fairly defeated, and find a better cause to fight for.

Chinese spies are barking up wrong tree 

If the Chinese really are bugging the benches of St James’s Park in London, they may struggle to find a place to plant their microphones.

The German Kaiser’s spies were probably installing primitive Teutonic listening devices in the Park’s gas lamps before the First World War. 

Did Soviet technicians leave their crude Communist wiring to rot once the Cold War ended, or have Putin’s men been back since to modernise it?

The very trees and litter bins are probably thick with directional bugs. For who has not watched spy films in which bowler-hatted civil servants, umbrellas swinging, have shared secrets with each other as they stroll to lunch at the Athenaeum Club through that most political of parks. 

If the Chinese really are bugging the benches of St James’s Park in London, they may struggle to find a place to plant their microphones. Pictured: Chinese President Xi Jinping

After all, it is no distance from the Foreign Office, the Wellington Barracks and Downing Street itself. 

It is ideally placed as a seemingly innocent rendezvous for a secret document passed on in a brief brush of hands, or an indiscreet conversation between high officials. But that is why the spies of Beijing will be wasting their time.

The park is so obvious a spot for such things that the really well-informed official will no longer go there. 

The KGB used dreary Barons Court Underground Station to hand over cash to their British Communist stooges over many years, and they were never caught. Real spy work can be pretty unglamorous.