With Brianna Ghey’s mother present, Sunak’s bad-taste transphobic ‘joke’ sparks backlash
Tasteless: Rishi Sunak thought it was clever to pass a transphobic comment during Prime Minister’s Questions – with murdered trans teen Brianna Ghey’s mother in the public gallery. Victoria Atkins’s (behind him) joy at what he said may be considered indicative of Conservative attitudes to the murder of transgender people.
Rishi Sunak proved once and for all that he is not the kind of person decent citizens of the UK want representing them with a verbal attack on a murdered girl in front of her mother.
This is utterly vile, and for once Keir Starmer was absolutely right in his response:
Rishi Sunak brings our Parliament in to disrepute. He makes a bad transphobic joke in front of the mother of a murdered trans kid during #PMQs trying to score cheap points against Starmer. Disgusting. He should apologise straight away. pic.twitter.com/aKMIwRsbF7
— John Spiers (@squeezyjohn) February 7, 2024
Did you spot, also, the laughter from Sunak’s equally-grotesque Health Secretary, Victoria Atkins – indicating that his disrespectful attitude to the dead is shared by the rest of his Parliamentary party?
He subsequently ignored calls to apologise to Brianna Ghey’s mother, who was watching Prime Minister’s Questions from the public gallery:
Liz Twist asks Rishi Sunak to apologise to Brianna Ghey's mother #PMQs
Sunak ignores the question and doesn't apologise pic.twitter.com/8eAK5AMheJ
— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) February 7, 2024
The public outcry was immediate – but let’s have a bit of background first.
This Site hasn’t commented on Brianna Ghey’s murder previously because it was a news story about crime, not politics.
In brief: Brianna, a 16-year-old British transgender girl, was murdered in a premeditated attack when she was fatally stabbed in Culcheth Linear Park, Culcheth.
Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, both aged 15 at the time, were convicted of her murder on December 20 last year and were sentenced on February 2 to life imprisonment, with a minimum of 22 years for Jenkinson and 20 years for Ratcliffe before being eligible for parole.
The court ruled that the murder was primarily motivated by sadistic tendencies and that hate against transgender people was a secondary motivation of Ratcliffe. It involved a significant degree of brutality and planning.
There was widespread public distress and grief over Brianna’s murder, along with sympathy and support for her family.
This is probably the reason people responded to Sunak’s jibe the way they have. The most common word This Writer has seen used to describe him begins with a ‘C’… and it isn’t “chap”.
For example, here‘s Supertanskii: “I said the £1k bet about refugees was Sunak’s lowest point, you said I was wrong and you were right. Making jokes about trans people as Brianna Ghey’s grieving mother sits in the gallery then refusing to apologise for it, proves what Sunak is… A complete c***, frankly.”
Personally, I hope Sunak doesn’t apologise. Even if he does, he won’t mean it.
And if he doesn’t, this can stand as a reminder of what he is, for us all, in the run-up to the general election.
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Dunno if you noticed, Mike, the grin on reeves’ gob when keef started his response…until it dawned on the stupid mare.
I’d also like to know what it is that the odious sunak has to apologise for, here.
Keef couldn’t define what a woman is. How is that in any way disrespectful to the victims mother?
That said, I haven’t heard sunak define what makes a woman a woman.
But make NO mistake, this would have passed entirely without issue, had the victim’s mother NOT been in attendance.