July 10, 2024 - 10:00am

“The era of culture wars is over,” according to the new Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy. Speaking to staff at her department yesterday, she condemned “polarisation, division and isolation”, and promised to make culture more inclusive. Up and down the country, jaws dropped as one of Labour’s most divisive politicians reinvented herself as a benign figure who wouldn’t dream of stoking conflict.

“That is how I intend us to serve our country — celebrating and championing the diversity and rich inheritance of our communities and the people in them,” Nandy claimed. Does that include girls whose aspirations are being crushed by boys who insist on competing in female sports categories? Women who have lost jobs in arts organisations because they refuse to go along with nonsense about “gender identity”?

She didn’t say. But Nandy 2.0 would have to be a very different creature for any of us to be reassured. She is one of the most intransigent supporters of transgender ideology in the party’s senior ranks, once calling for women who disagreed with her to be expelled. She also insisted that male rapists who “identify” as women should be housed in women’s prisons. Last year, she said children as young as 13 who want to change gender should be “taken seriously”, ignoring evidence that most young people grow out of dysphoria.

Nandy’s use yesterday of the phrase “culture wars” signals an astounding lack of self-awareness. It’s a lazy sneer, trivialising justified concerns about the impact of identity politics on a wide range of issues, from prisons policy to sport. Anyone who uses it is taking a side in a conflict they dismiss as spurious, while pretending to be above such petty behaviour. And that exactly describes the position of the Cabinet minister currently responsible for culture, media and sport.

The appointment of such a high-profile supporter of identity politics has been greeted with dismay. Nandy’s brief covers the book world, where the launch of SEEN in Publishing, a network set up to challenge discrimination against gender-critical editors and authors, has exposed the influence of transactivism.“Get fucked” was the response on X of the director of a PR company. Recently a book blogger, who has now been sacked by Waterstones, announced that she would enjoy tearing up and binning books by a gender-critical author.

If ever there was a moment to stand up for free speech in publishing, theatre and the arts more generally, this is it. But we now have a culture secretary whose grasp of the serious issues facing her department resembles that of a self-righteous teenager.

Nandy has been followed into government by a slew of politicians, including the Women and Equalities Minister Anneliese Dodds, who have spent years repeating transactivist slogans. It is a sign that Sir Keir Starmer has no intention of listening to critics, including some of his own MPs, who believe his promises to protect women-only spaces can’t be trusted.

Culture is on the front line of a conflict between people who believe in reality and supporters of an anti-science cult. When Nandy condemns “polarisation” with a straight face, it’s hard not to giggle. Really, though, the rights of women and girls in culture and sport are no laughing matter.


Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.

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