By the time of the 2010 general election, David Tennant had already emerged as a leading actor in Doctor Who and was fast becoming a leading figure in Labour election campaigns.
Tennant was an avowed Labour supporter and Labour candidates facing defeat at national level were keen to make the most of his public support.
But this week his relationship with Keir Starmer's party suddenly became a bit problematic. In his acceptance speech at the UK LGBT Awards, Tennant launched a personal attack on Kemi Badenoch, the Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, openly wishing he could live in a world where “Kemi Badenoch doesn't exist anymore”. Perhaps realising that it wouldn't be a good look to wish the government's only black female minister nonexistent, he hastened to add: “I don't wish her ill, I just want her to keep quiet.”
But would it have made a better impression to tell a woman who has championed women's space and rights to “shut up”?
The background to this unpleasant row is that Tennant is a known trans “ally” and Badenoch has led the government's (somewhat belated) efforts to strengthen equality laws to protect women from the infringement of female homosexual spaces and sport by “trans women” (biologically males). Badenoch, who is the front-runner in next week's almost certain Conservative leadership election following the party's heavy defeat, has therefore become a target of hatred for the transgender movement and its supporters.
Tennant is a typical representative of the privileged metropolitan left, preaching virtue, tolerance and kindness – his acceptance speech included a line about “everyone having the right to be whoever they want to be, and to live their life how they want, so long as it doesn't harm anyone else” – but he never displayed these values ​​towards anyone who dared to disagree with him.
Telling anyone, let alone a government minister, even a black woman, to “shut up” because they disagree would usually be seen as the worst kind of misogynistic bigotry, usually by the very same types of people who applauded Tennant's speech. But on some parts of the left, tolerance and kindness has limits, and they only extend to those who share the mistaken belief that gender-critical women are bigots and transphobes (a word used so often and inaccurately that it has lost its true meaning as an insult).
Tennant is so committed to the transgender cause that he can't even seem to consider the alternative: that many women, including former Labour supporter J.K. Rowling and Labour MP Rosie Duffield, may have legitimate reasons to fear the erosion of women's rights. The left's argument is clear and simple: rights are not a pie or a zero-sum game, and giving rights to one group does not mean losing rights to another. That's what they tell themselves, even though it's obviously wrong.
How do you defend a woman's right to change clothes and use the bathroom away from the male gaze while angrily and aggressively defending a man's right to wear a dress and use the same bathroom?
Would Mr Tennant look at the four NHS nurses who are taking legal action against their employer to defend their right to use changing rooms free from gay male colleagues at Darlington Memorial Hospital and judge them to be bigots and transphobes? Perhaps he would prefer nurses to “keep quiet” too and undress in front of men rather than risk offending them?
And where are the Labour women who scream in anger when a right-wing man tells them to shut up simply because they disagree with him? Isn't Labour supposed to be the party that debates these issues respectfully? Or does that only apply when the screaming women are also making a racket about their rights?
Badenoch hardly needs men like me to defend her. She responded to Tennant on Twitter: “I will not be silenced. I will not be silenced by men who prioritise the claps from Stonewall over the safety of women and girls.”
As the kids say, woah.
One last thing. Isn't it odd that in a week where Rowling is the most prominent women's rights advocate ever and the most staunch media critic of Starmer and the Labour Party, Tennant has chosen not to attack her? Why not attack one of the most influential women in the world in broadcasting and media, and instead decide to attack a black female politician? Strange times indeed.
Ironically, Rowling is busy promoting a collection of essays by women involved in the fight for women's rights, to which she has contributed, called “The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht,” Scottish for “to be silent.” David Tennant would understand.
