Why there’s nothing 'progressive' about David Tennant’s intolerance of Kemi Badenoch

Because we’re all wise and thoughtful people, we fully understand the importance, and the implications, of free speech. We know we must give others all the freedoms we enjoy when it comes to their expression of views religious, political, or personal. And we accept this means we will hear things said with which we profoundly disagree.

In some instances, our disagreement may be overwhelmed by disappointment or anger but that, we know, is an unavoidable part of the deal. Not everyone is as clear-headed on this simple principle as we are.

For much of my life, the threat to free speech seemed to come from the reactionary right. Dreadful authoritarians pushing “family values” have been a constant presence down the years. But, increasingly, I see the threat coming from a political left that identifies itself as “progressive” (these days, a word that seems to mean little more that “something of which I personally approve”).

David Tennant looked forward to the day Conservative politician Kemi Badenoch "doesn’t exist anymore", adding "I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up" (Picture: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for ReedPop)

Nowhere is this intolerance of differing views more clear than in the matter of legislation on gender issues. Scottish Government plans – ultimately so poorly conceived as to be unworkable – to introduce a policy of self-ID provoked feminist campaigners into action. Their opposition to changes in the law reflects the majority view and is based on serious concerns, not only about the sanctity of single-sex spaces but about an ideology which encourages the medicalisation of gender-confused children.

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The response from many on the self-styled “progressive” left to these campaigners and others is to smear them and demand that they are silenced. Feminist campaigners with decades of experience fighting for women’s rights have found themselves “no-platformed” for expressing the “hateful” view that biological sex is both real and significant. This is a belief shared by a majority of people, and across the political spectrum.

One of the many women, including Labour and SNP MPs, who holds this strangely controversial opinion is Tory equalities minister Kemi Badenoch, a right-winger who – should she survive next week’s election – will be a leading candidate to succeed Rishi Sunak as her party’s leader.

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It is hardly surprising that Badenoch appeared to have few supporters in the audience at the British LGBT Awards, where the actor David Tennant was honoured for being a “celebrity ally” and applauded for a speech in which he declared that “until we wake up and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist anymore – I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up – I am honoured to receive this”.

A useful thought experiment

Is it progressive for a man to wish aloud to a cheering crowd that a woman with whom he disagrees did not exist? No, of course it isn’t. Should a great liberal man of the left be telling a woman – any woman, never mind an MP – to shut up?

Both Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak have been critical (the former less vehemently than the latter) of Tennant but, of course, there are others who think it was just fine for him to do so.

Perhaps those men on the progressive left might try a little thought experiment. If a successful actor said he wished a young black female director, poet or novelist didn’t exist but that, since she does, she should shut up, would they think that perfectly fine?