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another, it throws the Equality Act provisions on single-sex services and facilities into a morass of confusion.

A third consequence is that it makes it impossible for lesbians to form associations — organised groups of at least 25 members — that are open only to females. It requires such associations to admit males with GRCs who are attracted to women. Whatever the law says, for many lesbians these are simply heterosexual men.

The formerly thriving lesbian social scene is already on its knees. In 2023 there were only three lesbian bars left in the country. The only one remaining in London operated on a self-ID basis. Lesbians report being kicked off dating apps for saying that they only wish to meet biological women. Protests and threats of cancellation have forced us back into socialising behind closed doors.

If the judges’ decision confirms that lesbian associations must admit males, the inevitable result will be even fewer of them. Since it is not practicable to ask for proof of GRC status, those that remain will simply open up to any male who is willing to assert an unfalsifiable female gender identity for whatever benign or malignant reason he may have.

This issue affects gay men too, but it has particular salience for lesbians. Lesbianism is the only sexual orientation that does not include men. Yet — and one does not have to think too hard about why this is — heterosexual men have always shown a particular interest in it. Many lesbians have heard variations on the “all you need is a good man” theme. This is not only tiresome but, often, threatening. Research shows that lesbians are at higher risk of rape, sexual assault and sexual victimisation than other groups, including heterosexual women and gay men.

How could anyone not have foreseen this? If men can self-identify as women of course it's going to happen: men in bad wigs and fake breasts, often enough not even bothering to shave their beards off, dominating lesbian dating sites. Along with death and taxes, the third certainty in life is men taking every opportunity to exploit women.

In For Women Scotland, the Supreme Court considered written submissions from a group of lesbian organisations with the glorious collective title of the Lesbian Interveners, which spoke powerfully of the existential threat posed to lesbian social life by the unnavigable state of the law. A possible outcome of the case is that the judges will decide that a GRC does make a male into a woman under the Equality Act, but will also suggest that parliament considers amending the legislation to sort out the problems this causes.

Perhaps the Equality Act needs a complete rewrite. But Labour have shown no interest. As I wrote last year…
The Equality Act was formulated at at time before gender became the new cause celebre so the wording is ambiguous on the difference between sex and gender identity, which wasn't a thing then (and isn't a thing now, either, but here we are), allowing for the kind of manipulation that lets men get into women-only spaces, women's sport, women's jails, rape centres, and so on. Clarification was required – yes, the Tories should have got round it a lot sooner – but the current ambiguity suits the gender activists. It seems to suit our new Labour government too.

f principle – that is, the question of their approach to Israel. The Palestinians are facing an existential test. They must recognize the fact that the Jewish people have deep roots in the land that was theirs 2,000 years ago, and that the Jews can further expand this connection despite the Palestinians' violent attacks. Thus, in order to save what remains of Palestine, the Palestinians must completely give up the idea of return to pre-1967 Israel – the return that was promoted over the decades by the UN, via UNRWA, and that means the end of Israel. No other group of refugees has ever had such an idea nurtured in their midst – just the Palestinians.  

The Palestinians must change their approach to Israel and the Jews. Even then, their future as a people is not assured. This choice is tough as hell – but what is certain is that if they do not choose it, after nearly 77 years of Israel's existence, they will be lost as a people.

They can learn from the Zionist leader David Ben Gurion, who was ready to accept any partition plan, partial as it was. They can also learn from the Zionist leader Yigal Allon, who maintained that this is our land, but that this does not mean that it cannot be shared or divided, out of humane concerns.

There is an urgent need for this decision. At this very moment, before the war is renewed in full force, will the Palestinians have the strength to make such a decision? Apparently not. The Jews accepted it only after the Jewish leadership – Ben Gurion, Allon – did so because the Jewish people had already experienced 2,000 years of suffering and persecution culminating in the Holocaust, choosing survival and humanity. For Hamas and the Palestinians, as for most of the Arabs, their political culture is one of victory, and Islam is a religion of empowerment and triumph. Survival and humanity are not built into their political and religious culture, as they are for the Jews. 

Two weeks after the war began, on October 23, 2023, I published an article titled About the Future. In it, I wrote that the war would continue for about another decade. When asked why I was so pessimistic, I said, "Pessimistic? I am realistic. It could take a lot longer."

As the renowned Moroccan liberal intellectual Tahar ben Jelloun, idol of the left in Europe, put it sorrowfully but truthfully: "The Palestinian cause died on October 7, 2023, murdered by fanatic elements mired in an Islamist ideology of the worst kind."

t-size: 11pt”>The Russian interior ministry said 3.5 million passports had been supplied to people in Ukraine’s Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

The Kremlin said in 2022 that it had annexed all four regions, despite not fully controlling any of them. Kyiv has called the process “illegal” and a “gross violation” of Ukraine’s sovereignty.

President Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, offered on Wednesday to host a three-way summit between Putin, Trump and Zelensky.

A key Russian ally, Belarus has previously hosted peace talks on Ukraine, including shortly after the start of Moscow’s all-out invasion in 2022.

Lukashenko also praised Trump as a “good guy” and said that his efforts to end the war were “brilliant”.

The most recommended comment:

What a spectacle: Russian propagandists, those polished ventriloquist dummies of tyranny, gloating that Trump has not set a single condition for peace upon Moscow, only upon the nation that was invaded, bombed, and butchered. And why should they not gloat? They have seen before what happens when a man with no moral compass stumbles into their grasp, mistaking submission for strategy, imagining that the bear, if sufficiently flattered, might yet become a lapdog.

Meanwhile, Medvedev mutters about Ukraine’s “maximum defeat,” as though he were announcing the weather rather than the obliteration of a sovereign nation. Putin, that hollow-eyed relic of Soviet ambition, hands out Russian passports to Ukrainians under the threat of starvation and exile, the oldest trick of empire dressed up as benevolence. And now, as if to complete the grim farce, the Belarusian despot Lukashenko offers to host a “peace summit,” no doubt picturing himself as a modern-day Metternich while playing court jester to the Kremlin.

We have seen this theatre before, and we know how it ends: not with peace, but with the tightening grip of conquest. And yet, astonishingly, the so-called leader of the free world is playing along, demanding not that the aggressor withdraw, but that the victim surrender. This is not diplomacy; it is capitulation dressed as pragmatism, appeasement masquerading as statesmanship. Europe must take note: America is no longer a reliable ally.

Worse than "no longer a reliable ally": now actively supporting our enemies. They've switched sides.

Illarionov says he learned of the Trump administration decision to cut off all military support to Ukraine on February 25th, before Zelensky's White House meeting on February 28th.
Zelensky's visit was then blamed retroactively in the March 4th announcement of the decision. pic.twitter.com/4LyPDaGEFd

— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) March 5, 2025

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If this is true, then yes, the whole Oval Office farrago  – the humiliation of Zelensky to get a response – was indeed a set-up.

tps://mickhartley.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451ebab69e202e860fb4d2a200d-pi” style=”display: inline”>

twsrc%5Etfw”>March 4, 2025

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s are women, look what happened to Sandi Tokvig’s women’s party when they told their women members that men are women, the same thing will happen to you."

"You have betrayed nurses and other working class women in favour of middle class males identities. Shame on you."

"Why would any woman want to be represented by you lot? You think women's legal rights and protections apply to men."

You are an absolute disgrace. No wonder the Darlington nurses started @DarlingtonUnion which all nurses should join rather than Unison. You are not fit to represent women or nurses !

And so on…

Remember this? Just a few weeks ago.

Today UNISON’s Women’s Conference passed a motion stating “That Trans Women are women and Trans men are men, all our LGBT+ comrades must be respected.” Not one delegate spoke against. In a world of increasing hate and division, I’m proud that our union is a beacon of unity 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️✊

— Steve North (@UNISONSteve) February 13, 2025

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ont-size: 11pt”>Kim Yo-jong, a senior figure in Pyongyang who sometimes serves as spokeswoman for her brother, accused the United States of “hurling strategic assets into the Korean peninsula” after an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier docked in South Korea in a show of strength and solidarity with its ally.

“The US and its stooges’ heinous ambition to threaten, pressurise and bring [North Korea] to its knees by force of arms is developing into a more reckless phase with the passage of time,” she was quoted as saying by the North Korean state news agency.

“As the deployment of US strategic assets to the Korean peninsula becomes institutionalised and negatively impacts our security interests, we are seriously considering measures to escalate our actions threatening the security of the enemy at the strategic level.”

The implication is that the North will expand nuclear weapons production, a resolution expressed in the past by Kim Jong-un. This week there is further evidence that he is carrying out his threat.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported signs that North Korea was operating factories for enriching nuclear fuel for warheads, in violation of UN security council resolutions.

Are they perhaps angling for some attention from the Big Orange Donald? Last time, despite the photo ops of the two great men together, nothing was achieved. But times have changed.

Trump had three meetings with Kim Jong-un during his first term, although the two men failed to agree on terms for North Korean denuclearisation. Since returning to the White House, the US president has said little about his policy towards North Korea.

He caused some alarm by referring to Kim Jong-un as “a nuclear power”, a term that is generally applied only to the US, Russia, China, France and Britain. Although it is well known that North Korea possesses nuclear warheads, in diplomatic terms the use of the expression implies an acceptance of them, and an abandonment of efforts at disarmament.

Hmm. No doubt Trump will at some point announce his bold new plan for North Korea. He'll "make a deal".

We're being told by commentators and strategists that this is all a clever game, demonstrating the unique Trump genius, whereby he can finally focus his mind on the great issue of China instead of being distracted by side issues like Ukraine, the alliance of the free world nations, NATO, and the future of Europe. But since his last term North Korea has pivoted from being China's close ally to being a friend of Putin. Indeed relations between China and North Korea are rumoured to have become somewhat strained, as North Korean troops are despatched to Ukraine and North Korean arms are supplied to Moscow. Will Trump factor this in? Will he acknowledge North Korea as a bona fide nuclear power to please Putin, and annoy Xi?

Anything's possible.

Yesterday I was wondering how widespread in Arab circles was the view of the Egyptian journalist that Hamas must surrender its weapons, and Trump's plan for Gaza, while absurd, was the only game in town. Well, it seems they're taking this seriously. Trump has got them talking.

From the Times:

Arab states have adopted a $53 billion plan to reconstruct Gaza while sidelining Hamas, in a proposal they hope will forestall President Trump’s demand to empty the territory of its inhabitants and turn it into a US-controlled “Riviera”.

Leaders from the 22-member Arab League met at a summit in Cairo on Tuesday, despite sharp divisions between some of the countries over the future governance of the Gaza Strip, which Hamas has controlled since expelling Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in 2007.

Abbas, who was present at the meeting, said he welcomed the plan and called on Trump to aid with the reconstruction without carrying out the US president’s previous proposal to displace Gaza’s 2.1 million inhabitants and turn it into a “Middle East Riviera”.

Egypt produced a detailed blueprint of its proposals in a 91-page document, including pictures of brand new public buildings.

And very nice they look too. 

The plan envisages 200,000 housing units to be built in Gaza and more than $50 billion in aid to fund its reconstruction, overseen by a committee with Hamas playing no role. Such funding is likely to centre on hefty contributions from oil-rich Gulf states.

It's a positive development after the Arab world has for years refused to get involved. But they still don't want any Gazans – fellow Arabs – moving in. And Hamas, of course, is refusing to disarm, or go away any time soon.

Deborah Lipstadt, the historian perhaps best known here for her part in the David Irving case – which she won after he sued her for libel – summarises her reasons for turning down a teaching post at Columbia University:

My decision to withdraw my name from consideration for a teaching post at Columbia is based on three calculations. First, I am not convinced that the university is serious about taking the necessary and difficult measures that would create an atmosphere that allows for true inquiry.

Second, I fear that my presence would be used as a sop to convince the outside world that “Yes, we in the Columbia/Barnard orbit are fighting antisemitism. We even brought in the former Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.” I will not be used to provide cover for a completely unacceptable situation.

Third, I am not sure that I would be safe or even able to teach without being harassed. I do not flinch in the face of threats. But this is not a healthy or acceptable learning environment.

On too many university campuses, the inmates—and these may include administrators, student disrupters, and off-campus agitators as well as faculty members—are running the asylum. They are turning universities into parodies of true academic inquiry.

We are at a crisis point. Unless this situation is addressed forcefully and unequivocally, one of America’s great institutions, its system of higher education, could well collapse. There are many in this country—including those in significant positions of power—who would delight in seeing that happen. The failure to stand up to disrupters who are preventing other students from learning gives the opponents of higher education the very tools they need.

Meanwhile, absent direct and comprehensive action to protect Jewish students and the campus environment, I will not be teaching on Columbia’s campus.