This is a tragic story, from start to finish. The imperial over-reach of a handful of trans activists, in trying to rewrite widely accepted ideas abo… - Helen Lewis

Another adjective often attached to Sturgeon is feminist. When the Conservative prime minister Theresa May visited Scotland in 2016, Sturgeon tweeted a photograph of the two women shaking hands, with the words "Politics aside—I hope girls everywhere look at this photograph and believe nothing should be off limits for them." The majority of Sturgeon’s cabinet is female, as is her chief of staff. She is adored by a generation of young female activists: the SNP store once sold <small>EAT, SLEEP, NICOLA, REPEAT</small> T-shirts.

What the government proposes is a radical rewriting of our understanding of identity: now it’s a question of an internal essence — a soul, if you will. Being a woman or a man is now entirely in your head. In this climate, who would challenge someone with a beard exposing their penis in a women’s changing room?

Those two words—values and competence—are key to Starmer's plan to remake Labour. Britain's Jewish community is small—0.5 percent of the population—but the issue of anti-Semitism cut through more broadly in the general election. To many Jewish voters, the party’s failure to expel anti-Semitic conspiracists and cranks has been personally painful, even frightening. To the wider electorate, it sent out the message that Corbyn was either complicit or incompetent. Neither is an attractive proposition when choosing a prime minister.