Re: recent action of Liberal Democrats.
Dear Labour, Green and Conservative By-Election Candidates and party chairs,
For me, and most who take note of this matter, the Lib Dem decision to denounce me as “transphobic”, even if it became a local news story, is a storm in a teacup. Its just name-calling, no one really cares (on one level I don’t care either).
Indeed, I’m sure you will agree, at election time, party tribes have a long history of utilising anything about their rivals that they think “voters would like to know” (as Lib Dem candidate Robert Brown recently put it). In the excitement of performing this important task, they occasionally veer into defamation and factual inaccuracy and have to retract and apologise.
In this case, there is a different reason why I want to describe to all candidates in these by-elections what happened (which will become clear by the end of this letter).
The Lib Dem candidates post on Nextdoor (05/04/24)
At first, it was just a series of comments by a local Lib Dem candidate/activist on the neighbourhood social media site Nextdoor denouncing me as a transphobe.
The Chair of Brighton & Hove Independents emailed the Lib Dem chair objecting to Brown’s unfounded claims, asking that the comments be removed. Quite reasonably, she pointed out the recent embarrassment for Lib Dems nationally where they’d been obliged to take down an article slating the Cass Report. “The Lib Dems locally, particularly Robert, really must learn to read the room on this issue which has nothing to do with being anti-trans and everything to do with child safeguarding”, she said. Surprisingly, the Lib Dem chair responded by confirming he would discuss B&H Independents chair’s “threatening email” with his candidate.
The comments (that had been live on Nextdoor for 16 days) were then deleted with a typical ‘non-apology’ apology added (see footnote). But almost immediately Robert Brown doubled-down on his claim that I am transphobic with a 4-page letter to B&H Independents sent by his chair/agent – which I attach. He is of course free to send me his views and I do not wish to curtail anyone’s criticism of me. All of us must be free to express what we believe to be true. I suspect that the content of this letter is what Brown and the Lib Dem chair genuinely believe to be true (less a ‘smear’, I think, more of an innocent ‘what voters would like to know’ expressed (post Cass Report) from what most would now describe as an ignorant ideologically captured standpoint).
I intend to place the 4-page Lib Dem letter in the public domain alongside this letter – which helps with context (an ‘open letter’ to you) partly because I suspect the Lib Dems are not quite finished with me yet. However, I share their 4 page letter with you today because it illustrates the dogmatic mind-set that caricatures opposition as automatically “transphobic”.
In Brighton & Hove, these by-elections take place at an extraordinary moment. We are in the early stages of a dawning realisation that our schools have breached child safeguarding in relation to the ‘toolkit’ guidance issued on ‘gender questioning’ pupils. In short, some children – we don’t know how many yet (some are autistic and/or same sex attracted) have been harmed.
This context, in which the by-elections haphazardly take place, is all the more extraordinary because the safeguarding scandal correlates with the recent publication of the Cass Report. If that wasn’t enough, we also had (on April 14th) shocking revelations about Brighton in the Observer and Sunday Times. You have to ask: Do the Lib Dems read the papers or listen to the news? The Lib Dem ‘gender identity’ activists must be among the last who still imagine the unfolding child safeguarding scandal is simply ‘anti-trans rhetoric’. I don’t care that the Lib Dems are so tone-deaf and so bizarrely out of touch that they have yet to discover recent changes to the Equality Act (2010). When they finally do catch-up with the real world they will see that what has become known as ‘gender critical belief’ is now a protected characteristic. ALL the views that Robert Brown thinks he has discovered on my twitter/X account in a series of ‘gotcha’ moments (the retweets of Linehan, LGB Alliance, Sex Matters, Transgender Trend and Helen Joyce) are deemed worthy of respect in a democratic society (see the Forstater ruling). The Lib Dems (in Brighton at least) also misrepresent the Cass Report and seem to imagine evidence exists that the report lacks rigour. On the bogus sources and other misinformation being peddled by the Lib Dems and many others, Hiliary Cass does not mince her words:
“If you deliberately try to undermine a report that has looked at the evidence of children’s healthcare, then that’s unforgivable. You are putting children at risk by doing that.
I don’t care about the Lib Dems. They are irrelevant (last year voters had no-idea if their Queen’s Park candidate was alive or dead – with Robert Brown turning up at the QP hustings imagining he might be allowed to answer voter questions instead). But I do care that their misinformation sways voters who regard this long established party as trustworthy. For this reason I invite all the candidates of Labour, Green and Tory parties to join me (before polling day, on Tue 30th please) in condemning the shoddy and shameless attempt to insult and demean a fellow candidate who is merely supporting, in good faith, parents trapped inside this unfolding child safeguarding scandal.
Kind Regards,
Adrian Hart
(Brighton & Hove Independents)
[Postscript: I asked local Labour, Conservative and Green parties to say something to me about this matter by 5pm Tues 30th but heard nothing. On Nextdoor I have suggested to Robert Brown that we debate these matters at a public event which we organise together.]
