BLACK IS WHITE

Andy Burnham, the supposed King of the North, in what many observers see as a cynical re-positioning of his views in order to secure a win at the Makerfield by-election and thus challenge Sir Starmer (as Jeremy Clarkson mischievously calls him) for the premiership, has rowed back on his previous backing for trans people to declare their sex and for trans women to use female toilets. He told supporters, “I think the time has come to take the Supreme Court ruling and the guidance and implement it.”

The Supreme Court ruling he refers to is the landmark judgement handed down in April 2025, which unanimously – there are twelve of them, all full-time judges – concluded that ‘sex’, ‘man’ and ‘woman’ refer exclusively to biological sex at birth. Which begged the obvious question – why did it take the ruminations of twelve of the most experienced and knowledgeable judges in the land to come to a conclusion, at much length and after considerable discussion, and state the bleedin’ obvious?

My father-in-law, a man of little formal education yet a wise old bird for all that, once admitted to me that he found the modern world quite odd. “A lot that’s going is so much nonsense,” he said, “It’s as if the world has tipped upside down.” Increasingly, I’m beginning to see what he meant. Alright, I am prepared to accept that there are tragic cases when some people feel that their gender identity does not align with the sex assigned to them at birth. It is a recognised medical and psychological condition, and it is called gender dysphoria. Such people need all the medical and psychological help that is available and deserve our sympathy. But for a man to claim he is a woman and to barge into female toilets and changing rooms – and claim it is his legal right – well, I think the world has gone mad. Ron, my father-in-law would have just shaken his head in faintly amused bewilderment.

This paradoxes in our lives, where the world seems to have been turned upside down, when fiction becomes truth, when black pretends to be white, set me thinking. It reminded me of a book that I had read as a teenager and one that I had taught in my English classes. Nineteen Eighty-Four, written by George Orwell and first published in 1949, describes a dystopian society where totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation dominate people’s lives. The book popularised many terms which entered everyday language: ‘Orwellian’, ‘Big Brother’, ‘Thought Police’, ‘thoughtcrime’, ‘Newspeak’ as well as the expression ‘2 + 2 = 5’. Orwell described his book as satire, but it struck a chord with readers who saw uncomfortable parallels with Soviet Russia. We can all remember those laughably inflated figures of tractor manufacture peddled by the Soviet press and communist propaganda lauding the country’s burgeoning economy when millions of its citizens were starving.

   Oops! Where’s he gone? Voroshikov, Molotov, Stalin and Yezhov inspect the Moscow Canal after its opening in 1937. Somehow Yezhov disappeared from official photographs after Stalin had given orders for his murder in 1940.

What about those notorious photographs of the Politburo in the Kremlin with figures who had fallen out of favour – more likely having fallen out of a window – erased from the original image? What you saw with your bare eyes was not necessarily true. The Chernobyl disaster of 1986, when a nuclear reactor exploded, caused dozens of direct fatalities and thousands of health complications stemming from the escape of radioactive contaminants into the atmosphere across Soviet Russia and Europe. Western press reported the accident as soon as it happened. The endemic secrecy of the Soviet government meant that their response was typically tight-lipped and only admitted three days later that there had been a “minor” explosion. Truth is always a victim of totalitarian rule.

  The first known photograph of the damage the explosion caused in the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in 1986.

Not that Western democracies are totally immune from massaging the truth. President Nixon lied through his teeth in order to conceal his administration’s involvement in the planting of listening devices in the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in Washington’s Watergate Complex in 1972. And what about Bill Clinton’s whopper on national television during the Monica Lewinski scandal in 1998? “I did not have sexual relations with that woman!” I don’t think Tony Blair told a direct lie – but he had naively allowed himself to be persuaded that he was telling the truth – when he informed the House of Commons in 2002 that Saddam Hussein could deploy biological and chemical weapons of destruction “within 45 minutes of giving the order.” Total poppycock. The Iraqi leader possessed no such weapons but the excuse to invade Iraq needed authentication. The point to bear in mind at all times is to treat what we are told with a healthy dose of scepticism, something that is nigh on impossible in a totalitarian state. At least we can ask questions without fear of being slung into gaol.

President Richard Nixon                               

President Bill Clinton

Both lied on national TV.

Or can we? In a world increasingly dominated by social media, cancel culture and articles analysing every move and opinion of ‘celebrities’, we are constantly surrounded by ‘public opinion’, in the face of which we fear its wrath. We hesitate before uttering anything ‘controversial’ in fear of what others might think. Take the example of JK Rowling, the Harry Potter author, who faced severe backlash, boycotts and the cold shoulder from former colleagues because she had the temerity to say that biological women are….well, women, not what they choose to be. She has been pilloried for expressing an opinion that is manifestly right. Even if she had professed that the earth is flat, we should grant her the dignity of being free to express an opinion, no matter how outlandish. Freedom of speech…? Hmm.

Doublethink in Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four is the process of indoctrination where citizens were forced to chant slogans, such as War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. The manipulation of language and the presentation of conflicting information contribute to a climate where doublethink can thrive. Let me present some of the more outlandish examples in recent years where officious bureaucrats have attempted to change the way we think and behave.

Punch and Judy shows have been the staple of the British seaside for centuries. Barry Town Council have banned the show because of its “inappropriate hitting” and because it depicts “an abusive relationship”.

  Punch and Judy shows, the staple of the British seaside.

Spotted Dick, that pudding made from suet, raisins and currants, also dates back centuries, but Flintshire County Council, disapproving of the rude sounding name, has changed it to Spotted Richard.

   Spotted Dick, now known as Spotted Richard in parts of Wales.

A schoolgirl wore a Union flag dress, much like Geri Halliwell when she was a Spice Girl, for a diversity day at her school in Warwickshire. She was ordered home by her teachers because the dress might upset the sensibilities of other ethnic minorities who did not identify themselves as British.

  The Warwickshire schoolgirl sent home because her Union flag dress might cause offence.

Workers in council offices in Birmingham have been banned from calling visitors “love” or “dear”, because the familiarity might offend some.

I could go on. The well of ridiculousness is deep.

This might seem small beer compared with the colossal disinformation that even we, members of supposedly transparent democracies, have been obliged to swallow. But remember the words of Winston Churchill: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Caligula, Roman emperor 31-41 AD, infamously proposed his horse, Incitatus, to become a member of the Senate. Those who scoffed at this outrageous act of lese-majeste against the sacred reputation of the ultimate governing council of the ancient Roman state did not live long.

  Best not object, Senators. The emperor will not be pleased with you.

We need to be on our guard and not be seduced by comfortable disinformation. By embracing critical thinking, not believing blindly what we are told, we should be able to interpret the range of conflicting information and make up our own minds about what is true and what is (probably) false. Black is not white. It has never been so.

A lie gets halfway across the world before truth has a chance to get its pants on.” (Winston Churchill)