Nadine Dorries offers the illusion of easy choices while trans athletes pay the price

Nadine Dorries cares. Nadine Dorries just wants to help. Nadine Dorries is making the pinched, sympathetic face she makes when she is doing something that pains her deeply but nonetheless needs to be done, like abolishing the BBC or selling off the colour red. “In a choice between inclusivity and fairness, as culture secretary I will always choose fairness,” Dorries writes in the Mail on Sunday. “So I’m setting a very clear line on this: competitive women’s sport must be reserved for people born of the female sex. I want all our sporting governing bodies to follow that policy.”

Nadine Dorries chooses fairness. Nadine Dorries has a very clear line. One of the most squalid aspects of this entire discourse is the way it has been essentially condensed to a game of political slogans. “Inclusion versus fairness.” “Follow the science.” Comforting, catchy bromides that offer the illusion of clarity, of easy choices and easy binaries.

On Tuesday Dorries will meet the governing bodies of several major British sports and tell them to follow Fina’s lead in instituting an indefinite ban on all transgender athletes from competing in women’s swimming competitions. International rugby league has already acted. Sebastian Coe quickly hinted that World Athletics would be next. Now Dorries wants a UK-wide ban, across all sports, immediately.

Why the rush? And – given that no trans athlete has ever represented Team GB and the number of trans women in elite sport remains tiny – why now? Perhaps the unseemly haste offers a clue as to the true function of the powerful anti-trans movement: one that claims to be run on “science” and “fairness” but is driven in large part by identity, prejudice and a wish-list that extends far beyond swimming or