Since I happen to be the token woman at the Libertarian Alliance, I have been asked—with the sort of insistent cheer that makes refusal more trouble than it’s worth—to comment on last week’s Supreme Court judgment concerning transgender rights and parental status. Apparently, my being female is meant to grant me some interpretative authority in these matters. I don’t particularly want it. In fact, my first instinct was to dismiss the whole affair as a sordid brawl between two mutually repellent interest groups: men trying, and failing, to impersonate ugly women; and women who are ugly without the benefit of impersonation. Neither side has the faintest concern for liberty. What they are fighting over is access to the pile of illegitimate privileges amassed over the past half-century by what used to be called “the women’s movement.”

But I have since reread Alan Bickley’s recent essay, “Where We Stand: A Revolution Within the Ruling Class,” and now I think there is something worth saying that does not merely throw up its hands and opt out. Bickley’s argument, in essence, is that what we are seeing is not a culture war between radicals and conservatives, but a convulsion within the ruling class itself. This judgment, and the silence that followed it, should be understood in that context.

For those unaware of the judgment, I will explain as briefly as I can what I can gather from 88 pages of judicial reasoning. Because facts should be kept separate from argument, I will also try to keep to the terminology used in the judgment—though it is all, if my view, a touch iffy. Here goes:

The Supreme Court’s judgment in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers ([2025] UKSC 16) addresses the legal definition of “woman” within the context of the Equality Act 2010 (EA 2010) and its implications for the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018.

The 2018 Act aimed to improve “gender balance” on public boards in Scotland by requiring that 50 per cent of non-executive members should be women. The Scottish Government’s guidance extended the definition of “woman” to include transgender women holding a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). For Women Scotland (FWS), a gender-critical advocacy group, challenged this definition, arguing that it conflated the distinct protected characteristics of “sex” and “gender reassignment” under the EA 2010.

FWS initiated a series of legal challenges, contending that the inclusion of trans women with GRCs in the definition of “woman” exceeded the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament, as equal opportunities are a matter reserved to the UK Parliament. After initial rulings against FWS, the case progressed to the Supreme Court.

On the 16^th April 2025, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favour of FWS. The Court held that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the EA 2010 refer exclusively to biological sex, not to gender acquired through a GRC. It concluded that interpreting “woman” to include trans women with GRCs would render the EA 2010 incoherent and impracticable, particularly concerning provisions related to pregnancy, maternity, and single-sex spaces. Consequently, the Court deemed the Scottish Government’s guidance unlawful.

This judgment clarifies that, under the EA 2010, the protected characteristic of “sex” pertains to biological sex. While the ruling does not diminish the protections afforded to transgender individuals under the characteristic of “gender reassignment,” it delineates the legal boundaries of sex-based rights and provisions. The decision has significant implications for the interpretation of equality legislation and the administration of single-sex services and spaces. In short, for at least some purposes, a woman is a woman.

The more brain-dead Conservatives—that is, virtually all of them—are crying the judgment up as a victory for common sense, and as such for themselves. Anyone who really believes this should read the judgment. I was right from the start about its real effect, which is to pick winners and losers in a dog fight between two equally nasty groups. But it is a clear defeat and a clear victory. The feminists are delighted: they get to monopolise the privileges of having a vagina. The trans activists are wounded: they have been classified by law for some purposes as eunuchs in dresses, and using the ladies toilet is no longer one of their human rights.

Now, we can put “common sense” and “conservative family values” aside here. These are not and never were the issue. The judgment must be seen as the prelude to a beating down of the lunatic wing of our Revolution by the people who never went mad, but merely found it useful to keep madmen out front for a few years.

To understand this, we must return to Bickley. His central claim is that we are witnessing the final stages of a conflict within the ruling class. Power, he writes, is never straightforward. It does not wear uniforms or occupy clearly marked offices. In Britain, as in America, it operates through a latticework of financial interests, regulatory bodies, bureaucracies, and ideological enforcers. The real power is the monied interest based in the City of London. The government serves not as its master, but as its instrument—taking policy suggestions from above and pressure from below, all mediated through a layer of obedient functionaries.

This monied interest displaced the old landed elite after 1918, and solidified its control in the decades after 1945. The formal empire was traded for an informal one, based on finance, influence, and the careful use of American muscle. Since the 1970s, its rule has grown more malign, more decadent, and more absurd. It has empowered a managerial class of stupid but loyal bureaucrats. It has encouraged social atomisation through mass immigration and race politics. It has wrecked British industry to prevent the rise of any independent economic base that might threaten its supremacy.

But things have not gone entirely to plan. China was supposed to be a compliant factory for the West, not a strategic rival. Russia was meant to collapse, not rearm. The Ukraine war, intended to isolate Moscow and cow Beijing, has backfired spectacularly. NATO has been exposed. The sanctions regime has hurt Europe more than it has hurt Russia. And the British population, which once marched off to war in orderly ranks, now responds to talk of conscription with memes and shrugs. The ruling class has realised that its strategy has failed. Worse, it now lacks the tools to enforce obedience.

Hence the need for a Thermidor Reaction. The term refers to the stage in a revolution when the pragmatists, having used the radicals to destroy the old order, now move to destroy the radicals in turn. In revolutionary France, Thermidor was not the end of the Revolution. It was the moment when Robespierre and his friends were guillotined so that the new elite could rule without having to worry about being purer than thou. What followed was not freedom, but stabilisation. The Directory, then Napoleon.

Britain is now entering its Thermidor. Donald Trump’s return to the American presidency has shifted the balance of the Anglosphere. His faction wants a functional industrial base and a coherent working class. And since Britain cannot rule itself, it must follow suit. The Starmer Government—a puppet regime if ever there was one—will have to accommodate this change. It cannot do so openly. Its ministers are deeply compromised. Its activist base would revolt if told the truth.

And so the courts are deployed.

Bickley explains, and I agree, that the British judiciary is not independent in any meaningful sense. When the issue is petty—a boundary dispute, a traffic fine—you can get something like justice, or you will if you have the money. But where matters of state importance are involved, the courts serve the regime. Not officially. Not openly. But certainly. No British judge would risk his standing with the powers that be to defy the interests of power. If there has been a change of heart in the financial oligarchy, you will see it first in judicial rulings.

That is what we see here. The Starmer Regime has not passed a law to define motherhood. It has not denounced transgender ideology. It has not dared to contradict the activists who put it in office. Instead, it has waited. It has said nothing. It has measured the reaction. And now it can throw up its hands and say, with perfect insincerity, “This is the law. We can do nothing.”

Note the timeline. The judgment was handed down in late April. Ministers said nothing for days. Then, with calculated reluctance, they announced that they accepted the decision and would not legislate to overturn it. This, according to the BBC, is now the official line. The government has spoken. But only after the courts spoke first. This is not hesitation. It is orchestration.

So let us return to the transgender case. Yes, it is ridiculous. Yes, it involves people who are either mutilated or mad. But it is not just a freak show. It is a signal. The regime is repositioning itself. Not for freedom. Not for truth. But for functionality. The insane fringe is being culled. The useful idiots are being discarded. And the courts are the chosen instrument.

We should expect more such judgments. Not all at once. Not loudly. But one by one, the insanities of the past decade will be pared back. Censorship will ease—not because the government loves liberty, but because it fears backlash. Immigration policy will shift—not to protect the nation, but to prevent the nation from becoming ungovernable. Energy policy will moderate—not with any public rejection of the green lies, but to keep the lights on.

And through it all, the activists will scream. That is part of the theatre. They must be seen to lose, so that the regime can look brave. In truth, it is all scripted. The extremists are no longer useful. They will be sacrificed. Their replacement will not be conservative, but competent. And competence, at this point, is revolutionary moderation.

Is this good news? It depends. Evil pragmatists are better than evil lunatics. They are less likely to destroy the currency or start World War III. But they are still evil. They do not believe in liberty. They do not believe in truth. They believe in stability, and in their own continued control.

So we should not mistake Thermidor for salvation. It is a breathing space. Nothing more. But in that breathing space, we must prepare. The regime is softening, not because it is reforming, but because it is rearming. We must use this time to build a real opposition—one that does not depend on the courts, or on elections, or on public sympathy, but on parallel institutions and the slow, patient construction of alternative power.

The Revolution is not over. But the first phase is ending. Robespierre is on the scaffold. The Directory is waiting. And the British Supreme Court, in its shuffling, hushed way, has begun the process. We shall see more of this. The purge will continue. But let no one say that the Revolution has failed. It is merely changing costume.

Related posts:

Where We Stand: A Revolution within the Ruling Class? The War Budget: The Starmer Regime and the Worthless Tories Compete to Waste Our Money The Higgs Case: A Revolution in Retreat?

Powered by YARPP.